[Bigdaddy]

Wow, 1984 Donruss....

I certainly remember those days. That set was hyped to be limited (after the seemingly endless supply of previous years Topps, Donruss and Fleer) and it turned out to be scarce as hen's teeth. My dad had an 'in' at a candy distributor and we ended up with a several wax boxes.

Most of those cards from the '80s are still at my dads, but I did pull out any '84 Donruss cards whenever I would come across them, thinking that I'd eventually build a set. Well, I ended up coming across a complete hand-collated set and put it in a binder a couple of years ago. It was a lot of fun and brought back many memories. What the heck is this stack of Doug Frobel cards worth now?? Will Mattingly or Strawberry have the better career? Is Sid Fernandez for real? Brad Komminsk is a beast. Would you trade a Chicken for an A/B? It's interesting to see which cards we put in hard cases and which ones we just put in the stack in the 800 ct boxes. We all knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that these cards would pay for our college education, or maybe a down payment on a house.

So lately I've been getting several of those cards autographed and putting in the binder. And I pulled the trigger on a Don Mattingly private signing a few months ago and got the holy grail signed. Sweet mother of pearl. I thought it probably should be preserved and mounted above the fireplace, but alas, that idea was vetoed by the wife and Donnie Baseball's autograph went back in the binder with the rest of his 'mates.

1984 Donruss - what good memories.