General Forum

I wanted to reach out for opinions on the most iconic/fun/important cards of the junk wax era from the non-Topps manufacturers.   I'm building a binder of 1 page per year of only base sets of Donruss, Fleer, Score, Upper Deck, Sportflics and Bowman from 1981-1989 and am trying to make it as interesting as possible.   I want to include all the key cards of this decade from the base sets of these card companies.  I'm not including topps because I have a separate album for that with a differnent theme.   So for this album for example I have:

1984 Donruss Mattingly

1989 Upper Deck Griffey

1986 Donruss Canseco

1984 Fleer Glenn Hubbard (with the Snake around his neck)

1989 Fleer Bill Ripken FF card

You get the idea.   Would love to have some input from everyone on cards you think I need to make sure to include to tell the story of this era in cards.

Thanks!

For me one of the most Iconic cards is 1990 Score #697 Bo Jackson FBBB

In 1989 I paid $27 for a 1987 Fleer Will Clark. Still one of my favorite cards from the era. Always preferred the '87 Donruss Rated Rookie McGwire to his OLY card in terms of looks. '85 Fleer Eric Davis was another favorite. Man I'm compiling a list in my head but others will add them lol

1984 Topps USA McGwire

1986 & 1987 Topps Bo Jackson

1984 Fleer Update Puckett and Clemens

1983 Topps Gwynn & Sandberg

1988 Donruss Gregg Jefferies (It was huge then) & Mark Grace

1986 Fleer Mickey Hatcher (huge golve card)

1981 Donruss Tim Raines

1989 Upper Deck Dale Murphy Reverse Negative.

1989 Fleer Randy Johnson with Marlboro in background.

1983 Fleer Ron kittle RC when this set first came out this was the big card, guess they got it wrong.

1988 Donruss Mark Grace.

1987 Donruss Barry Bonds.

1981 Fleer Fernando Valenzuela.

I second the vote on Bo

Jefferies was the next big thing back then.

1981 Fernando Valenzuela

1981 Donruss best hitters with Brett and Carew

1986 Fleer Mickey Hatcher with the huge glove

• Gary Sheffield 1989 Topps
• Any of the Griffey rookies from 1989
• Bert Blyleven 1989 Upper Deck quad exposure

Mo Vaughn 1990 score or bowman, also 1991 score

Craig Biggio 1989 score (I always liked it for some odd reason)

1990 Frank Thomas Leaf

1982 Donruss Danny Ainge

1988 Donruss with all three Ripkens

1990 Fleer Jose Uribe (couldn't help myself)

1996 Ripken Upper Deck

I don't have any specific examples, but maybe get a few cards with "iconic" uniforms. The Expos, Giants and Astros had some really great uniforms in the 80's.  And the White Sox had some Gawdawful ones.

Sounds like a cool collection.