shining that blue light special on the 1982 kmart box set

back in the late 1970's and early 1980's, my brother and i would typically spend a weekend a month at our grandma's. she lived in the same town as us so we saw her frequently, but spending this time with her was fun for us and i am sure it gave our parents a break.

she lived down the street from a small corner market that happened to sell baseball cards, so we'd walk down on saturday morning and i would be treated to a few packs. it's a core collecting memory for me, along with the trips we would take to the local kmart on those same weekends. kmart was for toys - usually a bag of plastic dinosaurs or a hot wheels car - but in 1982, something else caught my eye.

seeing this boxed set at kmart blew my mind. the set celebrates the american and national league most valuable players from 1962 through 1981. 1962 was the year that the first kmart branded store was opened, and 1981 was the most recent year for which mvps had been named. a true 20th anniversary set! i had to have it, and my grandma obliged. i was in my fifth year of card collecting, but i was seeing many of the images on these cards for the first time. 

over the course of my collecting years, i've owned several of these complete sets but discovered recently that i didn't have any of them currently - or at least i couldn't find one. so, i bought a couple (bubble gum not included). one to preserve in a binder and one to mine for my 1978 topps master set. i decided to run through the set here on the blog and share my thoughts for posterity.

1962 - mickey mantle and maury wills

this was the first mickey mantle card i ever owned, and i felt like a real collector with a mantle card in hand. i was also happy and proud to see a dodger so early in the set. my local card shop owner was the one who let me know that the image on wills' card was not a real card from 1962 (i wasn't collecting in 1975, so i didn't know about the mvp card in that set that used this same image). kudos to topps and kmart for making this happen, although it should have been pretty easy since the image already existed.

1963 - elston howard and sandy koufax

back-to-back yankee and dodger dominance. i believe that i had a sspc koufax by the time this set came around, and i certainly had his cramer legends card and his albuquerque dukes pitching coach card, but this was the first card of his that featured an actual vintage topps design that i owned. today, koufax's 1963 topps card is the first of these actual cards that i own.

1964 - brooks robinson and ken boyer

i did not know anything about ken boyer before i saw this card, but eventually i learned that he had been a dodger later in the 1960's. i knew a lot about brooks robinson, however, as he was featured in the 1978 topps set that i collected passionately and studied endlessly.

1965 - zoilo versalles and willie mays

versalles was the same to me as boyer - a guy i didn't know anything about who eventually became part of my dodger collection. i knew a lot about mays, though. i had read up on him and had heard some about him from my dad who had seen him play during his first years in california. i was such a fan of mays at an early age that i almost purchased his 1966 topps card at my very first card show in 1979. i own both of these actual 1965 cards as part of my 1965 topps complete set.

1966 - frank robinson and roberto clemente

by the time this set was released, i was aware of frank robinson's 1972 topps high number card showing him as a dodger. i didn't own it, but i was aware of it. i was also well aware of roberto clemente and his story as i had written an essay about him for school in 1979. i own the 1966 frank robinson card as part of my sampler sets (1966 sampler to be posted at some point in the future).

1967 - carl yastrzemski and orlando cepeda

this is the first year to not include a dodger or "future" dodger. i knew about yaz, as he was in the 1978 topps set (with an all-star shield) but i didn't know about cepeda. yaz is the first player featured in the set who was still active when the set was released.

1968 - denny mclain and bob gibson

i was aware of these two pitchers prior to owning this set, thanks to mclain being the last pitcher to win 30 games and gibson having that dominant 1968 season. i remember learning about don drysdale's scoreless streak from the 1968 season and then being amazed that gibson had an even better season.

1969 - harmon killebrew and willie mccovey

repeat teams from 1965! killebrew's 1974 topps card was one of the first "vintage" (for me, pre-1978) cards i ever owned, and i believe i owned it before this set was released. mccovey, of course, was in the 1978 topps set, and i saw him play in person more than once prior to this set being released. what i remember the most was watching him in batting practice. he hit the ball real hard.

from here on, i own the actual cards of the mvps as part of my topps flagship complete set run.

1970 - boog powell and johnny bench

my birth year mvps. i didn't know too much about boog (another "future" dodger following his mvp era years) but johnny bench was a big deal to me and my neighborhood friends. like yaz, he had the all-star shield on his 1978 topps card and the reds were a primary competitor of the dodgers in the nl west back then. 

1971 - vida blue and joe torre

this is the first year to feature players who were both in the 1978 topps set (although torre was featured as the mets' manager). i was in the midst of "billy ball" fever in 1982, and was collecting vida blue cards with a passion, along with those of sal bando, joe rudi, jim hunter, reggie jackson, and the rest of the a's back to 1965. while i completed the runs of most of those team sets, reggie's rookie card eluded me and really helped put an end to my efforts. i did have all of vida blue's cards, however, including this fantastic 1971 release. of all of the cards shown reproduced here, that 1971 card was the first one of which i owned the actual card.

i'll cover the next decade of cards in a future post. stay tuned!