Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Second 100 Cards - A Review

Here's a brief review of the second 100 cards of the 1980 set. The division leaders so far are:

AL East - Boston - 10 cards
AL West - Kansas City/Minnesota/Texas - 8 cards
NL East - New York/Philadelphia/St. Louis - 9 cards
NL West - Los Angeles/San Francisco - 9 cards

The division races are tightening although several of these teams have been aided by the Highlights cards and will continue to be aided by the upcoming Leaders cards. The Cubs and Blue Jays have had the fewest cards so far, with 6.

There has been a pretty interesting breakdown of cards by position. The first six are Highlight cards and then it goes like this:

Catchers - 10 (22 total)
Firs Basemen - 4 (8 total)
Second Basemen - 3 (8 total)
Third Basemen - 6 (7 total)
Shortstops - 3 (10 total)
Outfielders - 19 (34 total)
Designated Hitters - 1 (2 total)
Utilitymen - 9 (19 total)
Starting Pitchers - 27 (45 total)
Relief Pitchers - 15 (29 total)
Swingmen - 0 (3 total)
Team Cards - 2 (6 total)
Checklist - 1 (1 total)

Like the first 100 cards, there were 4 regular issues of Hall of Famers and all of them have been inducted this decade (Perez, Gossage, Murray and Rice).

There was also a big influx of starting pitchers in this batch, by far the most represented of all of the positions.

Finally, there is a pretty even breakdown in the type of photo on the card:

First, the traditional headshot of a player - 37 cards (70 total)
A posed "action" shot - 25 cards (44 total)
Game action photos - 35 cards (73 total)

Glad to see that the action photos used in this set still carry a lead after 200 cards.

Thanks again to all of you who have been following along, I appreciate your comments and support.

1 comment:

  1. How does Topps decide what player is what number? I mean, sure it's probably arbitrary picking... but... they still had to sit down and make the list somehow. They obviously didn't go by alphabetical names, teams, position, or anything logical in any of the sets I've had. Any idea?

    I like how you're summing this up and doing "division races" with it. Clever.

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