Mother's had a lot to answer for in 1984. First, she threw out all your old baseball cards. Then Mother's Cookies actually forced you to trade with other collector's to finish your set!

For the second straight year, Mother's Cookies distributed partial sets of their baseball card on "baseball card days" at the ballpark along with coupons for more cards via a mail-in offer. Once again you were not guaranteed of getting the cards you need to complete your set so you were encouraged to trade.

Partial sets of the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres were given out on July 8th while the Oakland A's, Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners were handed out on July 15th, 1984. A total of 28 cards was in each set, and the Giants set featured paintings of past SF All-Stars (in commemoration of the '84 AS game being played in Candlestick Park).

Thin cards with rounded corners generally are loathed by collectors, but this set of 140 cards with attractive photography generated much interest at the time.

As a premium for the Dream Team collectors (see above), Nestle offered uncut sheets of Topps baseball cards. The cards were virtually identical to the '84 Topps set with the exception of the Nestle logo and featured all 792 cards!

Few collectors took advantage of the offer and there was little interest initially in the cards. Some enterprising dealers bought up most of the remaining sets of sheets (it had an estimated print run of 4,000 sets) and professionally cut the cards in to standard-sized sets. The cards have sold at a premium since and remain popular with collectors. Uncut sheets can still be found but they are not nearly as desirable because of the cost in having them cut.

What Ralston Purina called its "First Annual Collector's Edition" became neither annual nor highly collectable as it was only produced once more (in '87 as a set less than half the size) and is still hard to find a buyer for due to overproduction.

The California Angels and San Diego Padres teamed up with the U.S. Forest Service to produce team-issued sets featuring Smokey the Bear in early 1984. The cards were given out at a Padres game on May 14th and in Anaheim June 16th and celebrated Smokey's 40th birthday.

The California Angels set looks like a traditional team issued set with the Smokey logo in the bottom left, but each of the Padres cards show the play posed with Smokey and some are either giving or receiving baseball tips! Like the Donruss sets of the era, the San Diego Chicken is featured as is umpire and San Diego resident Doug Harvey - the first ump to have his own card since Bowman's set in 1955!

The Padres set is one of the cooler team-issued sets of the Awesome80s and can be purchased inexpensively on eBay.