Les Ballenas Blancas

1980 Venezuelan Stickers #256,
1981 Venezuelan Stickers #238 and #259

I've been collecting Bob Dernier's baseball cards since his rookie card appeared in the 1982 Topps set.  I casually collected his Topps, Donruss and Fleer offerings for the next few years and added them to nine-pocket pages in the back of my Phillies binder.  The task of completing a Dernier player collection became a little more difficult when Topps Tiffany, Fleer Glossy, Score and Upper Deck came onto the scene, but it was still relatively easy to track down each of Dernier's baseball cards.

When I purchased the first edition of the Standard Catalog back in 1988, I discovered that Dernier had a bunch of oddball cards I had never even heard of, let alone seen.  eBay helped in the mid-90s, as I tracked down his cards from 7-Up sets or Cubs team issues or even a stray Tastykake Phillies card.  Today, I believe I have ever card of Bobby D. except for the elusive few listed on my wantlist.  (I haven't bothered listing the one-of-one printing plates from the 2005 Topps All-Time Favorites or Retired Signatures Autographs sets.)

Every so often, I'll do an eBay search for "Bob Dernier" and there's very rarely anything new that appears that I haven't seen before.  Until recently.  I've added the stickers you see at the top of this post to my Bob Dernier collection through the magic of eBay.  I've known about the 1980 Venezuelan sticker for a while, but I had never seen an example of one.  I had no idea the 1981 Venezuelan stickers even existed.  (Actually, they're not really stickers.  The paper feels more stamp-like than sticker-like.)

Those of you with dedicated player collections know how cool it is when you track down and add something to your collection that you either a) never knew about it or b) knew about it, but thought you'd never acquire it.  My wife Jenna even seemed mildly impressed with my new additions, especially since the envelope they arrived in referred to me as "Señor."

I'll next turn my attention to trying to find Dernier's first ever baseball card, included within the 1980 TCMA Reading Phillies set.

Que será el mío. Oh sí, que será el mío.