1981 Topps Scratch-Offs

1981 Topps Scratch-Offs - #58 Bake McBride, #60 Mike Schmidt, #62 Pete Rose, #74 Greg Luzinski

Topps produced a 108-card scratch-off set in 1981, featuring five Phillies within the set. (Steve Carlton's card was featured yesterday.) The set's black dots were meant to be scratched off in order to simulate a baseball game. National League players featured green backgrounds, while American League players featured red backgrounds. The cards were found three to a panel with perforations between each card. The Phillies cards I feature here have been separated from the other two cards to which they were originally attached. I'm guessing these came into my collection via some long ago eBay auction.

I didn't obtain any of these when they were first released, save for a single panel of three cards I acquired (probably from the Card Doctor in Millville) in the summer of '81. I don't think we bought the panel - it contains Fred Lynn, Tom Paciorek and Ken Landreaux - so I'm guessing the Card Doctor threw it into our bag as a bonus after one of our frequent visits.

I don't remember these being for sale at Wawa, and if they were, I probably would have passed them over for the standard Topps cards, the 5 x 7 Super Topps cards, the '81 Topps Stickers or packs of '81 Fleer. (For whatever reason, I don't recall the Wawa closest to us carrying packs of '81 Donruss, and I have very few "original" '81 Donruss cards in my collection.)

I was surprised to find so many of these for sale currently on eBay. As of this posting, there are complete 108-card sets available with buy it now prices ranging from $5.99 t0 $17.95.