1985 Renata Galasso Pete Rose

I found this card at the card show I went to in early February.

It's a nice looking card featuring a painting of Pete Rose in a Phillies uniform. Rose played for the Phillies from 1979 through 1983. Here's the back.

The back says "Designed by Topps Chewing Gum, Inc." and P. R. E. Inc. No year given. Just what is this card? I'm also don't know the painter, Ron Lewis. There is nothing about him on Wikipedai but his style looks familiar.

It took me a little while but I identified this card as from the Renata Galasso Pete Rose set issued in 1985. I eventually found the set on tradingcarddb.com here.  Renata Galasso was an influential card dealer in the 1970s and 1980s in New York City. She got her start (according to Wikipedia) by selling hand collated Topps sets. Eventually she was producing her own cards in conjunction with Topps and TCMA.

There are 120 cards in the set, including 9 of Rose in a Phillies uniform. The first three cards in the set have Pete's stats, the next 87 cards have this same question and answer format on the back. The last 30 cards fit together like a large poster showing all of Pete Rose's cards from Topps on the back.

I was able to find two more of them on eBay. Here's another one with the Q&A format.

This one seems like an odd question to ask.  The other has the Topps cards on the back.

For you Pete Rose as an Expos fan (there has to be some, right), there are not very many baseball cards which feature Pete as an Expo. This set has 8 of them. Seems a large percentage when you figure Rose only spent a portion of one year there.