1983 Kittle / Payton / Strawberry 3-Card Panel

I've started work on cataloging the 1983 Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper card set. What makes these especially interesting to me is that it contains athletes from all major sports, both professional and collegiate. I looked all over the Internet for information on these for quite some time and couldn't find anything. Every once in a while there would be an auction on eBay for one, but nothing I could really make a checklist from.

Just this week I found the Kansas Historical Society and their huge collection of old newspapers on microfilm. I figured all was lost though since I couldn't go to their library. So I contacted my local library and found out about inter-library loans. I now have three rolls of microfilm on the way from the Kansas Historical Society to my local Fort Worth library. It will take a while, but I will eventually have a full checklist and images of every panel in the set.

Cal Ripken, Jr. Single-Card

These "cards" appeared every Monday in the sports section of the newspaper. Apparently, readers could vote for the players they wanted included in the set. I don't know if Cal Ripken, Jr. is featured in the 1983 set, but I do know he is featured in sets from later years.

With three players featured every week, that would be a total of 156 cards (52 weeks x 3 players/week). The 1984 set will be interesting to catalog since it features a 1984 Michael Jordan card with him as a Tarheel, pre-dating his earliest known basketball cards. This Jordan card recently sold on eBay in excess of $150.

1984 Michael Jordan 3-Card Pane

The primary goal in cataloging these items is to eventually get them listed in one or both of the major baseball card guides (Beckett and/or Sports Collectors Digest). I will continue to report back on my progress with this set. It should be a long road!