COLLECTING: 1981 Nashville Sounds baseball card set

In seeking to gobble up all the action they can, trading card companies have furrowed to the depths of the minor leagues in recent years, signaling the death of the private, team-issued sets.

Where a major baseball card manufacturer might have produced select minor league teams in years past, the emphasis now is to leave no base unturned. A product sameness is bound to result from such mass production. Bakersfield, Yakima, Medford, it will little matter, individuality suffers most.

Team-issued sets – or team-produced sets, whichever you prefer – were always as unique as their locales, and often less conventional than the homogeneous efforts of the commercial card makers. Printed on lower quality stock-board in some cases to cut costs, the regional sets tended to evoke a homemade quality and had a whimsical appeal all their own.

WORK OF ART: Bold, vibrant, and wonderful color reproduction is the hallmark of the classic team-issued set of the 1981 Nashville Sounds. A 25-card issue, it is worth $25 today. Aesthetically, it is limitless. As in many sets, one card is sometimes equal to most of the entire set’s value. That’s the case here with the Don Mattingly card ( 1981, incidentally, was his only season with the Triple-A Sounds). There’s also Otis Nixon (then a shortstop), Willie McGee, Mike Morgan, and former Arizona Diamondbacks manager Buck Showalter. Steve Balboni, a Nashville fan favorite, is not in the set, leaving with his 36-ounce lumber the year before.

Radio announcer Bob Jamison is included. Jamison, who went on to perform similar duties with the California Angels, is now a certified public accountant in Bowling Green, Ky.

Photographer Alan Loveless shot the players with a medium-focus camera, utilizing Ektachrome color slide film.

“A complicated, four-color separation process was used back then,” Loveless said. “Today, it would be digital and you wouldn’t get the same results. I’m keen on lighting and all the little details. The players were really happy with the outcome.”

A minor drawback with the set is that the cards are not numbered, making them difficult to reference. Also, the backsides list some biographical information but no performance statistics. All this, it can be argued, just adds to their “homegrown” appeal.

Arby’s has its logotype on the front opposite the guitar-swingin’ Sounds imprint. Arby’s sponsored the set and its Nashville area locations are listed on each card back, as is Loveless’s name and phone number.

WHAT A STREAK: Larry Schmittou, then the principal owner of the Sounds, produced a team set from 1979 to 1996, after which he sold the team and began collecting bowling alleys.

“It was strictly a promotion,” Schmittou said. “With ‘baseball card night’ we tried to excite the crowd. The adults liked them as much as the kids.”

Another giveaway featured some years was ‘poster night,’ when the cards in uncut form were given out.

“We gave them away to our fans,” Schmittou said. “There was no selling. A lot of dealers didn’t like that because they wanted to buy them in big lots. They were not inexpensive to put out, either. What didn’t get given away one year would go out early the next year.”

By the mid-1980s, Schmittou estimates, Star, Best, and Upper Deck, among others, began infiltrating the minor league market in working with the various leagues and teams and in selling cards on their own.

The days of the team-issued sets are fast going the way of the Sunday doubleheader. For the cost, and for the eyes, the 1981 Nashville Sounds set is well worth scouting for.