Hobby Archaeology: 1981 San Diego Union - Meet the Padres

    Yet another uncatalogued newspaper "card" set came to my attention thanks to a post in the "Ozzie Smith collectors thread" over at Freedom Cardboard today.  It seems that in 1981, The San Diego Union printed a series of player profiles to introduce the 1981 Padres to the city.  The series ran from March 8th to April 17th in the sports section and kicked off in style with the Wizard, and this message:

A Message To Our Readers     From the manager down through the ranks, the 1981 Padres sport a new look -- so new, many baseball fans literally won't be able to tell the players without a score- card.    Therefore, beginning today and continuing daily until the start of the San Diego Padres season April 9, The San Diego Union will present each member of the 1981 Padres in the form of a baseball card.

The set actually ran eight days longer than advertised and wrapped up at 41 "cards".  Curiously, for someone who didn't really factor into the Padres in any meaningful way, Randy Bass was featured twice, on March 16th and March 20th.

Scan courtesy of Mozzie22

8 March 1981		Ozzie Smith
9 March 1981		Craig Stimac
10 March 1981		Broderick Perkins
11 March 1981		Dave Cash
12 March 1981		Jerry Turner
13 March 1981		Bill Fahey
14 March 1981		Eric Rasmussen
15 March 1981		Tim Flannery
16 March 1981		Randy Bass
17 March 1981		Luis Salazar
18 March 1981		Gary Lucas
19 March 1981		John Curtis
20 March 1981		Randy Bass
21 March 1981		Steve Swisher
22 March 1981		Mike Phillips
23 March 1981		Dave Edwards
24 March 1981		Barry Evans
25 March 1981		Eric Show
26 March 1981		Jerry Mumphrey
27 March 1981		Rick Wise
28 March 1981		Kim Seaman
29 March 1981		Gene Richards
30 March 1981		Tom Tellman
31 March 1981		Juan Eichelberger
1 April 1981		Steve Mura
2 April 1981		John Urrea
3 April 1981		Terry Kennedy
4 April 1981		Alan Wiggins
5 April 1981		John Littlefield
6 April 1981		Bobby Tolan (hitting coach)
7 April 1981		Danny Boone
8 April 1981		Juan Bonilla
9 April 1981		Ruppert Jones
10 April 1981		Joe Lefebvre
11 April 1981		Tim Lollar
12 April 1981		Chris Welsh
13 April 1981		Frank Howard (manager)
14 April 1981		Chuck Estrada (pitching coach)
15 April 1981		Eddie Brinkman (infield coach)
16 April 1981		Jack Krol (third base coach)
17 April 1981		Ed Stevens (coach)

Thanks to GenealogyBank.com for carrying the San Diego Union archives, making this post possible.  While I don't have access to any further years of the newspaper, I am told this feature ran for a few more years.

Checklist Translations: 1997 ProCard CPBL Baseball Hall of Fame [UPDATED]

    The third and final set issued by ProCard to cover the 1996 season introduced the "chrome" effect to Taiwan.  This shiny 122-card set was released in September 1997, was sold boxes of 24 packs, 6 cards to a pack.  Pack retailed for 150 yuan, which was about $4.50 US.  If I understand what Jack Li says in his blog post about the set, it was a bit too expensive for the market and wasn't terribly popular at the time.  As a result, this can be a fairly tough set to complete.  Interestingly, both Korea and Taiwan have had sets fashioned after Topps Finest or Chrome, but I can't think of a single similar set from Japan.

New Acereros de Monclova Stickers & Album

    The Mexican League's Acereros de Monclova have issued a new set of stickers and album covering their history from 1974 to 2015, to mark the team's 40th anniversary.  The new set looks very similar to the previous set issued in 2011, and if the images from their Facebook Page are any indication, some of the stickers may be repeats from the earlier set.  As before, there are both individual stickers of players, as well as 8-sticker puzzles, to fill out the 196-sticker set.

    This time around, instead of only offering the sets at the ballpark and through mail order, both the new and old sets are being sold on Mercado Libre, the main eBay-equivalent marketplace for most of Latin America.  The price for both sets, album included, is 200 pesos, which is about $13.50 US.  However, it would appear they are currently only shipping within Mexico.  Links to each album on Mercado Libre are below:

Álbum Y Estampas Acereros De Monclova 2015

Álbum Y Estampas Acereros De Monclova 1974-2011

Thanks to Mexican Super Collector Arturo for the news!