Zahn is one of four players I covered in this MMMM post, a guy whose collection spans the years of 1975-1986. He has just 36 cards I'm chasing--maybe going back to fewer brands DOES make sense!--and I found a ton of them on JustCommons, almost as an afterthought to be honest since I was more interested in harder-to-get items for other players. Because of the years he played, some of his stuff is actually fairly interesting, especially the vintage cards, meaning not ALL of it is junk wax-era crap! Here's what I scored:
Geoff Zahn 1975 Topps RC
An all-time classic set, of course. This isn't Zahn's only rookie card as he also appears in that year's Mini set. He's also part of '75 OPC, but I guess those can't be considered RCs? Whatever, doesn't matter to me. One other interesting note: 1975 is the only year he appeared as a Dodger as he was shipped to the Cubs in May of that season.
Man, people in the 70s and 80s had the dumbest haircuts.... Zahn had very little success in the NL, but fortunately he signed with the Twins after the following season.
This one is labelled "#532A" because two versions exist. On this one's back, his 1980 Career Highlights entry begins "Was 2nd in league for shutouts with 5." The other, which I don't have yet, starts with "Signed a 3 year contract...." I'm not sure why this variation exists, but given that this was Donruss' debut set and that it features many similar variants and errors (plus "Jeff" on the front instead of "Geoff" here), I'm not too surprised.
Zahn signed with his final team, the Angels (of the "California" variety back then) in 1980, so the rest of his cards depict him with that team. I don't know why Fleer went with this extremely weird and uninspiring dugout shot, but then again, it was just their second year and took them a few more to get things going.
Geoff had his finest season in '82, finishing 6th in AL Cy Young voting thanks to an 18-8 record with 12 CG in 34 starts. He made his only postseason appearance that year, taking the loss in game 3 of the ALCS, a series the Halos ultimately lost to Milwaukee.
Zahn does have a number of OPC versions paralleling the Topps cards on which he appears, though not for every Topps appearance. I thought it made sense to include them in his PC since they're fairly mainstream.
1985 was Zahn's swan song, and he went 2-2 in seven starts, then was released later in the off-season. He did land on his feet, though, and as I've mentioned, was later Michigan Baseball's head coach from 1996-2001.
This huge haul now gives me 22 of Zahn's 36 cards for a total of 61%, with more on the way!
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