Thirty years ago, collectors didn’t have ‘high end’ issues, relic cards, autograph inserts, 1/1 parallels or box toppers to chase down during the football season. With the exception of a few regional sets, they had Topps cards to chase and once the base set and one insert issue was completed, they were done for the year.
Times have changed and that’s easy to see when you do something like a 1983 Topps Cello pack break. Yes, ’83 is most definitely old school now and while it doesn’t match the star power of the next year’s issue which featured rookie cards of Dan Marino and John Elway, there’s something cool about those old cello packs.
Mike Singletary and Marcus Allen rookie cards were in this set and so are some of the superstars of the day who are now enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame like the late great Walter Payton, the great Ronnie Lott and Lawrence Taylor (2nd year cards) and Joe Montana (third year).
The ’83 Topps football set contains 396 cards, down from the 528 card sets they had been producing and there are 132 cards that were double printed, which didn’t make collectors very happy.
Cellos were 49 cents back in the day with each pack containing a whopping 24 cards plus an insert sticker (yes, the insert checklists from 30 years ago didn’t take long to compile).
Hop in our cello-wrapped time machine for JustCollect.com‘s Vintage Pack of the Week.
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