Friday, June 10, 2022

1983 Rawlings Willie Randolph Glove Tag

Re the title of yesterday's post - I certainly thought I got good value out of that lot. I just expected that a lot more people would have been disgusted by the condition of that Aaron card. Glad to see that most people appreciated it as much as I did.

A couple of comments on my flea market post mentioned that the Willie Randolph glove tag would be quite rare. I've seen glove tags occasionally on other blogs but hadn't come across any myself. Apparently they are a lot rare than I thought they would be, and certainly a steal for a dime. I can only find one available online. It's from COMC, and they are selling it for $47 on eBay and $15 on their own site.

It's a fun oddball, worthy of it's own post as most people probably hadn't seen one. I know I'd never seen one before (well, maybe attached to a glove when I was a kid, I don't remember). Here's the front.

Inside you can see a nice baseball-card-style layout for Randolph's stats. It might not be in TCDB or Beckett, but as far as I'm concerned, it looks like a card and is the size of a card, so it counts as one for me. On the right you have Willie modeling the latest Rawlings fashions. I believe styles may have changed a bit in the past 40 years.
Finally, here's the back. Rawlings at the time was owned by Figgie International, and industrial conglomerate headed by Harry Figgie, considered one of the toughest bosses in America. A few years later Figgie went bankrupt and Rawlings became an independent public company. They are now privately owned.


6 comments:

  1. I guess rare doesn't necessarily translate to riches, nevertheless, a cool find. I remember those when buying gloves but pretty sure everyone who bought a glove threw the attached card out.

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  2. I had a Willie Randolph glove as a kid. I think I got it secondhand though, so no card for me...

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  3. I've had a Steve Garvey glove tag from the early '80s for quite awhile. It never occurred to me that it would be worth anything.

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  4. Love that Rawlings printed a backside with stats to give it a baseball card feel. It's a very cool collectible. I wonder what other players Rawlings created cards for.

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  5. I never owned a new glove as a kid, and don't remember even ever looking at new ones in the store, so this sort of thing is completely "new" to me.

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  6. Didn't think there were stats on the inside, thanks for sharing!

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