[zeprock]

In 1981 I moved back to Maine from Florida and found myself working at a Wendy's making burgers and picking up a radio show at the local college radio station where I was not attending college. A friend of mine got a gig there and he told me to give them a call so I did. I asked how I could be a deejay there and was told to just show up. That started me off on my radio career of which I am currently in my fortieth year. 

Today I'm moving out of the vintage era and into the junk wax era. I believe that all started in 1981 when Donruss and Fleer were granted licenses to produce baseball cards. These two companies were in such a rush to get their sets out that they each made numerous errors, many of which they later corrected. The photos were less than great but for the first year in my lifetime, I had more than one set to collect. I remember buying hand collated sets of each of these at Downeast Coin and Collectibles in downtown Bangor, Maine and later acquired many of the variations in an attempt to complete my "master" sets. Here are nine 1981 cards from my collection.

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1981 Coke Team Sets #69 Nolan Ryan (Produced by Topps for the Coca-Cola Company and issued by Coke for promotions in only a few cities.)
1981 Fleer Star Stickers #108 Nolan Ryan (I have two of these Fleer stickers of Ryan the other being a much lighter blue.) 
1981 O-Pee-Chee #261 Rickey Henderson (The Canadian equivalent of Rickey's second year card.)

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1981 Pawtucket Red Sox TCMA #15 Wade Boggs (This is the only minor league card issued of The Chicken Man.)
1981 Perma-Graphic Credit Cards #19 Rickey Henderson (This plastic "credit card" of Rickey was issued with the cooperation of Topps Chewing Gum.)
1981 Reggie Jackson Accel #1 Reggie Jackson/Popular Hot Rodding (This is one of a three card set showing Reggie posing in front of one of his prized automobiles from his collection.)

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1981 TCMA 60's II #444 Ted Williams
1981 Topps #315 Kirk Gibson RC
1981 Topps Traded #850 Fernando Valenzuela (Anyone else remember Fernandomania? Fernando won the Cy Young Award and Rookie of the Year Award.)