1983 Topps Return of the Jedi

The very first cards that I collected as a kid were Return of the Jedi cards. As a six-year-old in 1983, I collected the whole set, but I didn't take good care of it. I still have most of the cards, but hadn't sorted them because I didn't want to know how many I lost when I was little.

When I bought the lot a few weeks ago that had a lot of nonsports in it (I still have a lot of low-grade Incredible Hulk and ET cards available!), it had a few ROTJ cards. I decided it would be a good time to sort my existing cards, and see if the new ones filled in any holes.

When I sorted the cards, I found that I was missing a fair amount. But what surprised me was that the checklists were incomplete. When I looked up images of the missing cards, I was surprised how many were unfamiliar to me! Clearly my childhood memory was wrong, I had not quite completed the set.

I haven't put a wantlist on my blog or on TCDB yet, but I did post it to OBC and I got my first "new" ROTJ cards in 41 years. As it stands now, here is my wantlist. If you have any of these, let me know! 2, 4, 5, 11-13, 29, 64, 85, 87, 91, 142, 145, 147, 152, 153, 155, 161, 163, 164, 170, 176, 186, 190, 201, 206, 207, 211, 212, 216

These cards came to me from OBCer Tom Biggs. How appropriate to get Star Wars cards from someone named Biggs! 

Of the nine cards that he sent, these six were familiar to me, I'm sure I had them before.

However these three were definitely brand new to me! Six-year-old me would have loved to have spent time staring at the unfamiliar characters, like the lesser-known Ewoks or the background Rebels. I even remember as a kid being intrigued by "Congratulating Wedge" in the checklist. Long before the internet I didn't have a picture of Wedge anywhere else, he wasn't in my other Star Wars books and didn't have a figure, so that card seemed a little extra-mysterious.