my favorite cards of the year - 1987 edition

i recently introduced my mini collection focusing on my favorite cards from each year that i've been a collector. the basic gist is that i wanted to create a space for the cards that i most appreciated having in my collection in the year that they were released. these were cards that i acquired in the year that they were issued, and that i considered to be my favorites at the time. i have disallowed (most) cards that are already in other mini collections in order to avoid having a mini collection consisting of more steve garvey, double plays, and dodger stadium cards.

i was still buying cards from all three major manufacturers in 1987 - donruss, fleer, and topps - but not in the same quantities as the past few years. i completed all three sets, but there weren't really any cards that i was too excited about. i remember being in the lcs at one point during the season (likely around the all-star break) and seeing mark mcgwire's 1987 topps card in the display case. i asked the owner where that card came from, and he told me it was in the regular set. i went home and found that i had three or four of them. they had not made an impression on me at all, and i hadn't really looked through my cards for a while.

at any rate, i did still have a couple of cards that i liked more than others, and here they are.

favorite non-dodger card: topps rickey henderson turn back the clock

i was pleased to see the 'turn back the clock' subset return for a second year in a row. back in 1978, when i found out that there had been 'tbtc' cards in the 1977 set, i was a bit disappointed that they weren't included in the '78 set.  anyway, i had billy ball fever in 1982, and seeing rickey's card from that year reprinted made me a bit nostalgic.  rickey, of course, was a yankee in the 1987 set, and seeing him in the a's uniform brought back good memories of his 130-steal campaign and getting to see him play in person for the first time.  

favorite dodger card: topps maury wills turn back the clock

dodger cards were particularly boring in 1987. they had no 'rated rookie' in the donruss set, and there were no big players that i looked forward to finding in the update and traded sets. bill russell had his final tributes, and i have those in my final tribute collection. and so it was that the card i liked the most was maury wills'. it had been five years since i first saw the 1962 topps wills card in the kmart mvp set, and just under five years since i discovered that it was a 'card that should have been' but never was. i appreciated the fact that topps used it again in this set, marking it the third time it had been included in a set (the 1975 topps mvp subset was the first occurrence). it afforded me another wills card to include in my flagship dodger team collection, and for that i was grateful.

tonight, the clock turns to a new year - i am so ready for 2021! happy new year!