Steve Carlton: 130 baseball cards

Some of the odder cards included in my lot of 130 Steve Carlton cards. Top row, from left to right: 1987 Topps Wax Box Bottom-with terribly airbrushed photo, 1984 Nestle Dream Team, 1987 Action SuperStars. Bottom row, left to right: hand-cut card from 1984 Topps wax box, 1981 Coca-Cola-showing off Steve's perm, and 1990 Baseball Wit.

And the more common 1980's cards.

I’ve been on something of Steve Carlton buying spree lately. In addition to my purchases of 440 cards, and 160 cards, I also bought a lot of 130 of his cards for $18. From the photo of the cards, it didn’t look like there was anything that amazing in here, just the usual batch of 1980’s cards. 

However, once I opened the case and started sorting out the cards, I discovered there were quite a few oddities sprinkled in. One of my favorites was the 1987 Topps Wax Box Bottom, which had to be hand-cut. Each wax box came with two mini cards that you could cut out. There were 10 different cards total. They commemorated milestones that players had achieved during the 1986 season, but that didn’t fit with Topps’ “Record Breaker” cards at the beginning of the set. So, we get cards for Cecil Cooper getting his 2,000^th hit, Ron Cey and Don Baylor hitting their 300^th home runs, and Steve Carlton getting his 4,000^th strikeout. My favorite Topps wax box bottom card is Bill Buckner’s from 1989, which commemorates his 2,600^th hit. What an odd milestone to care about. The conversation at Topps probably went like this: “Oh crap, we forgot to give Buckner a card for his 2,500^th hit! We’d better do something for his 2,600^th hit!”

Carlton’s wax box bottom card features him terribly airbrushed into a Giants uniform, uncomfortably staring down the camera. It’s not one of his best baseball cards. Oddly enough, this photo was re-used for a 1990 AGFA Film card. (I used to buy AGFA film! Back in the days when I bought film.) The AGFA card shows him in the Phillies uniform that he was actually wearing when the photo was taken, but because it wasn’t an officially licensed set, the logo on his hat is airbrushed out. 

Last week I waxed rhapsodic over the seldom-seen 1987 Action SuperStars card, featuring Carlton actually wearing a San Francisco Giants uniform, so I was excited to get another Action SuperStars card in this lot. 

There were also two of the 1984 Nestle Dream Team card, produced in association with Topps, another one of those odd 1980’s sets that I never knew about as a kid. I think it’s a nice-looking set, and it’s always fun to see sets that used different photos from the “Big 3” card companies. The Dream Team was a 22-card set that came in Nestle candy bars. Geez, I can’t imagine how many of those were ruined when people tore open their wrappers in a hurry! For some reason, Topps went all-out with Nestle that year, and there’s even a 792-card Nestle set that parallels the Topps set, with the only difference that the Topps logos were replaced by the Nestle logo. According to the internet, the Nestle set was sold in uncut sheets of 132 cards each, so if you have an individual card it’s been hand cut. And apparently there were only about 5,000 sets produced. 

The 1986 Fleer Star Sticker card is another cool one, featuring Carlton without his hat—it looks like he’s tipping his hat and waving to the crowd. One of the myths I remember reading about Steve Carlton when I was a kid was that he was so laser focused on his pitching that he never acknowledged the crowd at games, no matter what the occasion. That’s not 100% true—I’ve seen several photographs of Carlton acknowledging the crowd by tipping his hat. Carlton even tipped his cap when he threw his 5,000^th inning with the White Sox in 1986. A notable accomplishment, certainly, but probably not one that was on the minds of everyone at the ballpark. I’m curious to know what event is happening on Carlton’s 1986 Fleer Star Sticker card, but all I can tell you is that it happened at Veterans Stadium in Philly. 

The one card I’d never seen before was a 1984 Topps card of Carlton that didn’t have anything on the back of it. I stared at the card, trying to figure out what it was. Then I saw a thin stripe of yellow at the bottom right and I figured it out—someone hand-cut Carlton’s card out of the front of the 1984 Topps wax box! This isn’t especially rare, but I’ve never seen one before. You can pick up an empty 1984 Topps wax box for just a few bucks, but if you want one that’s full, they start at $150 on eBay. 

There were a handful of O-Pee-Chee and Leaf cards in the lot, which are always fun to come across, and two cards of the 1981 Topps Coca-Cola set. This was a 132-card set that was distributed with Coke products and limited to 11 different teams. The Phillies were one of those teams, so of course Carlton was one of the players included. The 1981 Coke cards of Carlton I’ve seen the photo is better quality than the actual Topps card, because the photo is a little bit lighter, so you can see more of Steve’s face. As a photo to use for a baseball card, this is really a pretty bad one to choose—half of Carlton’s face is in shadow, he’s not looking at the camera, and he’s turning his neck, which just draws more attention to his neck. It’s a weird photo. Plus, Steve is rocking a perm, which isn’t the greatest look for him. You can also see Steve’s perm on his 1981 Topps Record Breaker card, his 1981 Donruss card, and his 1982 Topps, Donruss, and Fleer cards. Hey, the 1980’s were a different time. 

This lot had many cool cards in it, and it was certainly worth the money.