By now, most of you know that Dollar Tree carries sports cards. Most of the stuff they sell isn’t highly sought after.  In fact, it’s downright junk.  I mean why would someone pay $1 for 2010 Topps Update pack containing 5 cards and no shot at any hits or parallels when you can spend $2 at Target or Walmart and get twice as many cards and have a shot at inserts?

But on occasion I find something worth while.  In this case, I found a little piece of my childhood.

The year 1988 was a special year for me as a collector.  It was my first true year of collecting.  Sure, I bought some packs in 1987, but it was in 1988 that I really got hooked on cardboard.  I loved Donruss for the Rated Rookies, and had fun finding odd-ball packs at random convenience and grocery stores throughout the area

At Dollar Tree last week, I found a sealed Cello Pack of 1988 Donruss … one featuring new HOF Roberto Alomar on the top.  Under normal circumstances I would have just chucked the pack to the side as this product is the epitome of junk.  But there was no way I could pass up on this pack given the card showing on top.

Truth be told though, that find was not as exciting as unearthing these two packs: 1988 Fleer Star Stickers and 1988 Sportflics.

The Star Stickers set is one that always intrigued me because in 1988 I could only find these packs at one store — a 7-Eleven near my grandfather’s house, which seemed worlds away at the time. I bought a handful of packs back in the day, hoping to pull any player from the Oakland A’s, probably the hottest team in the sport at the time. I didn’t have very good luck.

But on this day, I struck gold in the form of a Carney Lansford card — who ironically is from the area where I live.

Like the Fleer Stickers, packs of Sportlics were only available at one store in my area — a grocery store across the street from my house.   If memory serves me right, these packs were about 50 cents for a pack of three cards.  In 1988, this was pricey. Needless to say, I only bought a few of them when I was a kid.  So I was excited to unwrap one the other day.  Unfortunately the results were typical for what I would have pulled 23  years ago.

This entry was posted on February 18, 2011 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Newspaperman with tags baseball, baseball cards, Dollar Tree, Donruss, Fleer, Roberto Alomar, rookie cards, Sportflics, Topps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.