5 Cheap Vintage Hobby Stocking Stuffers

Cardboard love doesn't have to cost a fortune

When I was a kid (grumble, grumble, grunt, groan) …

December was the most magical month of the year.

Digging through the haze and malaise rendered by our Thanksgiving gluttony, us youngins were left to dream about digging through other things, like …

The acres and acres of snow we asked Jack Frost to sprinkle on us each school night …

The piles of egg-nog-drenched cookies and candy and pies and candy and candy canes and candy we implored the sugar plum fairies to leave us …

The heaping mounds of shiny, sparkly, blinky, face-melting, animatronic, fuse-busting, gaud-awful Christmas decorations that would litter the landscape from Grandma’s house to the White House and wouldn’t fully disappear until the next summer …

The mountains of presents we just knew Santa or Darren McGavin would stack around our tree …

It all sounds pretty hideous now. Overwhelming.

But if there’s one part of all those childhood holidays from the dark ages that I’m still down with, it’s relishing the little, baubly hobby oddities that started to show up in your stocking, or as a thinking-of-you gift from Aunt Agnes, once the family got word of your cardboard affliction.

They didn’t cost much then, and the STILL don’t cost much now.

Don’t believe me?

Here, then …

Take a gander at just a few of the old-school stocking stuffers you can still get for a song today, baseball-card style …

(Note: The following sections contain affiliate links to eBay listings for the cards discussed.)

1981 Coca-Cola Team Sets

The summer of 1981 was a dark time for baseball, thanks to The Strike that tore the season in two. But baseball fans had the light of two new major sets (Fleer and Donruss) to help us through. And, if you rooted for any of 11 particular teams, you also had an 11-card (plus checklist!) set to chase, courtesy of Topps and Coke. All these years later, you can still buy most teams for under $10, with many checking in under five.

1983 Topps Foldouts

These nifty little oddballs served as my baseball encyclopedia (smallcase) when I was first learning the ins and outs of the game in 1983. The drugstore in our little town somehow got hold of these (along with the “Michigan” test wrappers later on), and I bought one a week until I had all five and could tell you that John Mayberry was one of the 17 most prolific home run hitters of his time. And that Jerry Koosman was a White Sox win machine.

Skewed impressions aside, the foldouts were about as fun as baseball “cards” can be, and you can STILL buy them for $10-20 per set … sometimes less.

1985 Donruss Highlights

Donruss deliberated awhile before they joined the late-year card fray, and while “The Rookies” made its debut with much fanfare in 1986, it was actually “Highlights” that got new Big D cards in our hands for the holidays for the first time.

Sure, it’s not as flashy as a Wally Joyner rookie card, but Highlights delivered big in the moment: three Dwight Goodens, three Don Mattinglys, two Pete Roses, two Rickey Hendersons, and plenty of Hall of Fame firepower.

And there were rookie cards of Tom Browning, Ozzie Guillen, and Vince Coleman.

Today?

All that — plus the complete Lou Gehrig puzzle — can be yours for about five bucks.

1986 Fleer Star Stickers

This is the bank-breaking, stocking-stretching monster on our list, spanning all the way into the $30-40 range for an unopened box.

But if you want a complete set, you can buy in for less than that.

Either way, not a bad deal for a run of “stickers” that were actually full-sized cards that, it just so happened, you could peel apart if you wanted. And, as the name promises, this thing was all stars.

No Tim Birtsas PC is complete without this issue, after all.

1991 Topps Micro

This my nod to all the whippersnappers reading this, just to prove there’s life beyond 1980s hobby stocking stuffers.

Did anyone really need a full set of 1991 Topps baseball cards that were so small you didn’t dare open them outside of a mausoleum for fear ye olde HVAC system would whisk them to the nethers?

Nah.

But they’re kinda cool, and they’re cheap.

And easy to slide in a stocking.

And, word has it, their advent was solely reponsible for the 1990s resurrection of the microfiche reader market.

—

I’m sure if you dig around a bit, you can find — or remember — plenty of other “old” baseball card goodies that would look just fine piled on top of the Elf on the Shelf nightmare-maker that lurks about these days … and that are cheap enough you could use for kindling if it comes to that.

Better get your lists written out and checked a couple of times right quick, though, because 2022’s on its way out.

I can already hear Baby 2023 crying off in the distance, and it sounds like he’s asking for some 1984 Topps Supers.

Or something.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam