Topps Debut and more

From 1990 to 1992, Topps put out Debut sets with a card of every player who debuted in the big leagues the previous year. For many years I owned the 1990 ('89 debuts) and 1992 ('91 debuts) sets. This week I was able to pick up the 171-card 1991 ('90 debut) set for a very reasonable price. It was actually part of a larger lot but I had most of the rest of the lot. 

Here's the box. Was there really a Mike Bell mania in 1991?

Here are the most interesting cards in the set. While guys like Steve Avery ended up flaming out, the biggest stars in the set turned out to be Tino Martinez and Frank Thomas. I already had a small number of cards from this set, including that great Maas card. The others I had already were Charles Nagy, Tim Layana, and most of the Yankees.

Three other sets. I already had them, they're all trade bait. There's the 1992 ('91 debuts) Topps set - big names include Bagwell, Mussina, Thome and Pudge. The '89 Score set is missing the Griffey (which I was aware of) but has Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson and Jim Abbott. The '90 set's most notable cards are Frank Thomas and Eric Lindros. These are all trade bait. The two complete sets I'd rather trade as complete sets.

There was one other item in the lot, something I'd never seen before. Apparently in 1993 Donruss experimented with putting a pack of cards in a blister pack with a single oversized card called "Masters of the Game". This one came with a glum-looking Will Clark. I noticed the Bookland sticker - Bookland was apparently a chain owned by Books-A-Million until pretty recently.

Here's the back. Don't know if you can tell from the photo but the 28-year-old plastic was brittle and cracked, with a big gap where the pack could easily skip through. The package says Series I but the pack is Series II; perhaps at some point someone switched the pack?

Opened up the pack; to my mild surprise the postcard-sized baseball card was also designed to be a postcard.

As for the pack itself, I already have the full '93 Donruss set. Could I beat the 1:18 odds and get an insert?

Yes! A Spirit of the Game card I did not have! The rest of the cards are available for trade. Some pretty good ones including Wade Boggs and a great photo of Mike Boddicker.