Saturday Night Five: Cal Ripken Jr. 80's Oddballs

I grew up watching baseball during the Cal Ripken Jr. era.  So it was hard for me not to sit back in awe and admire his amazing twenty-one season career.  Obviously the consecutive games played streak stands out to most people.  But the thing I like about #8 is the fact that he stayed with the Baltimore Orioles his entire career.

Today Mr. Ripken is celebrating his 53rd birthday and tonight's post is in honor of Iron Man himself.

Here are a look at five of my favorite oddballs that sit in my collection:

1989 LJN Topps Sports Talk #77

I know that the 1989 LJN oversized cards are a pain in the butt to store, but I absolutely love them.  Topps did a great job incorporating their regular base card design into these oddballs.  If you're interested in learning more about these cards, here's a link to a post I wrote last year.

1986 Fleer Star Stickers #99

In the 80's... Topps had their bubble gum.  Donruss had their puzzles.  And Fleer had their team logo stickers... which they inserted into baseball card packs.  But they also created an oddball issue called Star Stickers.  Essentially... they're a baseball card and a sticker combined into one.

1983 Donruss Action All-Stars #52

From 1983 to 1985, Donruss had a line of oversized trading cards known as Action All-Stars.  I'm not a TTM autograph collector, but if I was... I'd probably use these.

1983 Topps Stickers #315

I'm glad Topps started producing sticker albums again, because I loved collecting them when I was in elementary school.  The above sticker is part of a subset called Stars of the Future, which also featured Ryne Sandberg and Wade Boggs.

1987 Donruss Pop-Ups #5

Okay... so Donruss might have stolen this idea from Topps.  But you know what they say... imitation is the finest form of flattery.  Anyways... these Stand Ups... I mean Pop-Ups are still pretty cool oddballs to collect.

Happy Birthday Mr. Ripken!

Happy Saturday and sayonara!