In the Mail - Singles

There are some Red Sox team sets where it doesn't make sense for me to buy the whole team.  There are some where I just accidentally happened to have a good start for whatever reason.  Maybe I bought a lot of packs that year and just had a bunch.  Maybe somewhere along the line I bought a Red Sox lot and picked them up that way.  I went to COMC recently and finished off a couple sets by buying singles.

I bought a lot of packs in 1981.  I almost had the complete Red Sox team without really trying.  But I never had this one before now.  I liked Fred Lynn when he was with Boston.  I have these memories, real or exaggerated, of him flying over center field walls to make catches and landing in bullpens.  Completing Donruss for 1981 means I have all the Red Sox from the big three products that year.

I made a mini run at the 1985 Fleer team set at a flea market once back in the 80's.  I was left four or five cards short and never finished it.  That has now been rectified.  Barrett was the biggest name player of the ones I picked up on COMC. That gives me all the Red Sox from the main brands in 1985, still just the big three.

My father-in-law had a bunch of Bowman cards from 1989.  I never had any, so when I got his two years ago I was introduced to these cards that were too tall for Ultra Pro binder pages.  So they were put in a box.  I did inventory before the COMC order and found that I was only missing Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens from the Red Sox.  By 1990 there was Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck, Score, and Bowman.  I now have all the Red Sox from all of them.  I'll probably do a post on Bowman pretty soon, but suffice it to say for now that I have really started to like them as I've been working on this team set project.

  

The 1998 Mark Lemke from Pacific Online wasn't bought to complete a team set.  I'm not working on minor sets like that.  But I didn't have a Red Sox card for Lemke yet for 1998 and going slightly oddball is how I had to get it.  After completing the team sets for any given year I should also circle back and see which players are not represented yet, if I ever get the time.