Vintage Frankenset Page 5

Back in 2020, I got the idea for a frankenset to give purpose to many of the random old cards that didn't really have a solid "home" in my collection. Plus it's a good excuse for me to check out neat old card designs that I otherwise might miss. The priority of the project eventually slid to the backburner, but I still occasionally fill empty slots and try to keep my streak alive of featuring one completed page on the blog each year. I showed off page 1 in 2020, page 2 in 2021, page 3 in 2022, and page 4 in 2023. So here's page 5 for 2024.

My Vintage Frankenset has 3 rules for entry:
- Cards must have been released prior to 1981.
- Must fit in a standard top-loader. (I group them into "pages" but the project consists of toploaders in a box, not actual binder pages, in part to deal with varying sizes.)**
- No flagship Topps baseball allowed. (I have a different project for that.)

**Update! These "pages" are no longer just 9-deep groupings of cards in a box; I found a lightly-used top-loader binder for a decent price and have now paged up the first 60 cards in their top-loaders. Feels like that improves the project while still allowing for different sized cards.

Here's your Page 5 overview. No surprise that the top-loader binder is larger than a standard 3-ring binder, looking more like a portfolio case, with its outer padding and zipper. The black backing of each page means the backs are not visible unless you slip out the cards manually, which is a minor bummer for me as I'm a "card backs" guy, generally speaking, and it might be tricky to keep track of card numbers if I can't see them as easily. But as long as I don't get sloppy about the order, should be fine. Also, while I originally envisioned the frankenset topping out at card #333, the binder holds 360 cards, so I suppose I should expand the project all the way up to a card #360.

Now for a closer look at the cards of page 5.

37 1977-78 Topps #37 Dan Bouchard

Things kick off with a hockey common. This is a recent addition; I was ordering some cards from a Canadian seller on Sportlots, and threw in 3 or 4 cheap vintage OPC cards to fill early holes in the frankenset. That always feels less "organic" than just stumbling upon old cards for this project, or receiving them in trade or whatever, but we only get so much time on this earth! lol (My collecting philosophy feels like it has changed since when I first started this blog in my 30s. Now that I've got more years behind me than ahead of me, I'm making an effort to be less "open-ended"/"long-term" than I used to be with my hobby projects.)

Dan Bouchard here has taught me that there are Louisville Slugger hockey sticks.. I hadn't realized that! I've got a few decent hockey cards in my collection, but I admit I'm a poser and am not a very knowledgeable hockey fan. Like, I thought the Flames were from Calgary, but that logo seems to feature an "A" not a "C", so what do I know?

The pizza cartoon is fun, but I feel like that could go on pretty much anybody's card. With a name like "Guy Bouchard", I was sure Dan's little brother went onto NHL stardom, but he doesn't show up in a hockey-reference.com search, so I guess not. As for Dan, he had a long career in front of the net, currently 41st all-time in career NHL games played at goalie. 

38 1976 HRT/RES Phila. Card Show - 1947 Series #38 Luke Appling

It must've been an epic card show in Philadelphia back in 1976, getting some retro oddballs printed up for the occasion. Fittingly, this was a card show pickup of mine a few years ago. Loved finding vintage oddballs in the sub-dollar bins back then.

These are supposed to be like "1947 Bowman that-never-was" cards meant to complement the real 1948 Bowman set that looks similar to this. Some big names in the 113-card set, like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, not that Luke Appling's a slouch.

39 1953 Bowman Color #39 Paul Richards

Here's a real Bowman card after that homage to the brand. A couple posts back I was talking about completing 1957 Topps and how I really like Topps not trampling much on the photo with that design-- Well, no set does that better than 1953 Bowman Color. Beautiful cards, even stained with a little water damage like this one. It's almost tempting to try going after that set, but nah, I'll be content just having at least this single example in my Vintage Frankenset and admiring the rest when I see them from afar.

Paul Richards would later manage the Orioles for a few years, and had a final hurrah in 1976 as skipper for the White Sox. His best season as far as the standings was guiding Baltimore to a second-place finish in 1960.

40 1977-78 Topps #40 Elvin Hayes

Happy to have basketball represented on this page by Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes. Cool card. Another cheap card show pickup from the past, I believe.

White paper stock! Nice bright, readable back. As a vintage baseball collector, I'm a little jealous that Topps basketball cards (at least for that year) have such better looking backs than the drab, grey stock that Topps used for most of their baseball products at the time.

41 1971 Topps #41 Alex Karras

I have a sentimental soft spot for Alex Karras thanks to watching Webster a fair amount as a young'un. Then I got older and learned he plays Mongo in Blazing Saddles, which blew my mind, and so I had to score a couple cards of his for my collection. This powder-blue beauty makes for a great center square of the page.

Karras played his last down in 1970, so this is his "sunset card" (a.k.a. "final tribute", "career capper", etc) with full career stats.. not that "interception record" is all that interesting. The "did not play" in 1963 turns out to be more interesting than injury; Karras was suspended that year for betting on NFL games. Crazy! He's been posthumously enshrined in Canton.

42 1977 Saturday Night Fever #42

I've never seen Saturday Night Fever, but in my head I think I tend to conflate it with Grease, which I've seen once or twice, both featuring peak John Travolta.. only with disco instead of '50s rock n' roll as the soundtrack. I think Bo sent me this card specifically for the frankenset. It was misplaced for a while, but glad I could find it to secure slot #42, incidentally a rare instance in the frankenset where the card number is displayed on the front.

Features a puzzle back with no context. Looks like a close-up of somebody's lips or something.

43 1924 Cavanders The Homeland Series #43 Looking Across Ullswater

I scored this for a buck in a 2016 COMC order. It's in great shape for a card that's celebrating its 100th birthday this year. I think I was just looking around for cheap tobacco cards that caught my eye. Love the subtle pink and blues. You can almost hear the symphony of frogs and other critters that likely filled the air when the original photo was taken.

Poet William Wordsworth is quoted on the back. Ullswater is a big lake in England.

44 1951 Bowman #44 Roy Smalley

Another off-condition old Bowman card that I must have picked up cheap either at a card show or on COMC. Love the puffy white clouds.

When I think of Roy Smalley, I just remember that his son Roy Jr had a solid MLB career, and the two appear on a Father & Son card in 1985 Topps.

45 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee #45 Steve Jensen

Page 5 ends as it began, with a hockey common. Without peeking on the back, I think that's a North Stars uniform, right? Pretty sure that's Minnesota. But the card tells me now he's with the Kings... though I'm not sure if they were in Los Angeles yet by then.

Steve Jensen's facsimile autograph on the bottom apparently inspired a previous owner of this card to practice some cursive squiggles of their own. The pen marks don't bother me too much, but this slot is definitely upgradable should a slightly more appealing vintage card #45 make its way across my desk. Plus, the card #46 that leads off the next page also happens to be a 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee hockey card... and consecutive cards from the same set in a Frankenset would surely be frowned upon by other Dr. Frankensetters out there, so a shake-up likely awaits.

Here's another look at the completed page 5 to wrap things up. Nice variety, with all four major North American sports represented, plus two very different non-sport cards further spicing it up.

See you back here in 2025 for page 6. That one's already completed, so no problem there. But then we start getting into swiss cheese territory by page 7, with slots #61 through 64 currently vacant.

Anyways.. Thanks for reading!

Vintage Frankenset Page 4

Back in 2020, I got the idea for a frankenset to give purpose to many of the random old cards that didn't really have a solid "home" in my collection. Plus it's a good way for me to check out neat old card designs that I'd otherwise not have much use for. The priority of the project eventually slid to the backburner, but I still occasionally fill empty slots and try to keep my streak alive of featuring one complete page on the blog each year. I showed off page 1 in 2020, page 2 in 2021, page 3 in 2022, and now we're up to page 4. 

My Vintage Frankenset has 3 rules for entry:
- Cards must have been released prior to 1981.
- Must fit in a standard top-loader. (I group them into "pages" but the project consists of toploaders in a box, not actual binder pages, in part to help deal with varying sizes.)
- No flagship Topps baseball allowed. (I have a different project for that.)

In theory there will be one card for each number up to 333. When pressed, no-number cards can be placeholders and move around in the frankenset, limit 1 per "page".

Ok, here's Page 4.

The horizontal cards shatter any illusion of this being a real page, but it's a not a bad selection of old cardboard. I usually strive for more variety; definitely baseball-heavy here, plus two tobacco cards from the same damn set. But oh well, nothing in my self-imposed rules says that's illegal, so we'll ride with it.

#28 1952 Bowman #28 Roy Hartsfield

Love the colors and background on this card. The tape stain nearly syncs up with the picture.

Roy Hartsfield never quite reached that future stardom, with 1952 being his final year in the majors. He stuck around in the minors for a few years before going into coaching, eventually becoming the first manager of the expansion Blue Jays.

#29 1965 Topps Embossed #29 Boog Powell

These things are pretty ugly, but hey, it's a vintage baseball card. And ya gotta love Boog, right?

Another reason these inserts aren't a favorite of mine are the lazy backs. There's a tinge of disappointment every time I flip a card over to reveal a lazy back. (The opposite is seeing a wall of tiny stats-- love that!)

#30 1970 Fleer Laughlin World Series #30 Mel Ott 1933

Laughlin cards are awesome. Nuff said.

#31 1935 Gallaher Shots from Famous Films #31 "I Was A Spy"

British tobacco cards like this are a great way to add pre-war cardboard to your collection for cheap. 

I Was a Spy is available to watch on YouTube (link). I skimmed it a little and think I found the scene in question at 24 minutes in.

The lady is a nurse in WWI who had been giving info to the British, and the dude there is a German officer who's starting to suspect she's up to something. Nice to have some context for this card I've owned for a few years now. I never really looked at it that well and assumed it was young lovers or something. I was way off! Based on the life of Marthe Cnockaert, misspelt on the card.

#32 1939 Player's Uniforms of the Territorial Army #32 5th BN., The Lancashire Fusiliers, 1915

There was once or two times a few years back where I was browsing COMC and basically just typed in old years, sorted by cheapest, and snagged a few pre-war tobacco cards I could find around the dollar mark. That's where most of my "f@g cards" come from (excuse the term, but that's what they were known as! It's what they call cigarettes over in England.)

TL;DR

#33 1955 Bowman #33 Nellie Fox

He doesn't seem to frequent my blog, but the blogger who likes to comment on blog posts about who "wins it" would probably agree with me that this Nellie Fox is the highlight of the page. Fun shot of a HOFer on a fun design, what's not to like?

I got this along with Bob Feller from the same set from a card show dollar bin, a favorite score from my days going to the monthly cardshow in the late 2010s. For that price, I'm totally cool with a bit of paper loss on the backs. (The Feller has the #134 slot in the frankenset, so maybe we'll get to that in a few years if I keep up this annual blog series. I could potentially do more than one page a year, sure.)

#34 1974-75 Topps #34 Jim Fox

Ha, I didn't realize I had back-to-back Foxes in the frankenset! Finally a sport besides baseball represented on the page. I like getting a look at old Topps designs that are less familiar to me. This isn't necessarily a great design, but still cool.

I believe this was a Sportlots throw-in a year or two back specifically to fill the vacant #34 slot.

Hang on-- For this next card coming up, I suggest you try to take your time scrolling to slowly reveal the card top-to-bottom. It's full of surprises if you do it that way.

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#35 1939 Player's Uniforms of the Territorial Army #35 4th/5th BN., The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders), 1917

This one is way more interesting than the other "Uniforms of the Territorial Army" card we saw a few back. The guy is wearing a kilt, caked in mud up to his knees, and he's pulling the pin on a grenade. Yet all business above the belt. What a badass.

It's not a baseball card, but hey "Highlanders" makes it basically a Yankees card, right?

#36 1951 Bowman #36 Joe Dobson

Last one for this post. The page opened with a '52 Bowman and closes with a '51. This was probably another dollar box pickup (7 for $5, likely) or maybe from other COMC "cheapest/oldest" search. The surface wear muddles the pretty clouds in the background, but I'm always happy to include old Bowman cards in this project.

Joe Dobson was a solid pitcher for a few years. All-Star in '48. Pitched well for the Sox in a losing cause to St. Louis in the '46 World Series. There was a time when it seemed I was picking up cheap old Bowman cards at the show here and there at a steady pace.. you start to think, "hey, these sets aren't very big... Maybe I could take a run at it?" But yeah.. the Mantle and Mays.. forget it.

But the beauty of the vintage frankenset is I can get a sampling of various cool old stuff like this without commiting to the huge undertaking of a vintage setbuild.

As for page 6 on deck for a post in 2024, it's still not completed. I'll need to find cards to fill open slots at 42 and 45. (Well, I have a card entered in for 42, but I've misplaced it.. so I guess we'll see if it turns up in the next few months.)

I hope you enjoyed the post. Have a great weekend, everybody.

Vintage Frankenset Page 3

Night Owl Cards is having a vintage theme week, so figured I'd sorta ride his coattails and make an overdue post in my Vintage Frankenset series. 

Looks like I posted Page 1 in 2020, and followed that up with Page 2 in 2021. Oh nice, that means I'll hit my quota for 2022 with Page 3 here! (Yes, I regret I missed doing a "refractor friday" post last week-- I have also missed my once-per-month quota on the 1991 MusiCards Blog two months in a row now, another source of shame for me-- so I have to find my blogging victories wherever I can.)

Page 3 (yeah, it's not really a page) features card numbers 19 through 27. To recap the rules for this project: cards must be made prior to 1981, can't be flagship Topps baseball, and must fit in a standard sized top loader.

19 1975 Hostess All-Star Team #19 Willie McCovey

Always love to see Stretch as a Padre. I have a better condition copy of this card in my McCovey PC, but this creased dupe works fine in the frankenset. I briefly considered trying to go after completing all the old Hostess sets, this after making a similar goal with old Kellogg's baseball cards-- talk about stretch goals (pun)-- but then decided to go easy on myself and just scatter a few Hostess cards in the frankenset.

20 1977 TCMA Renata Galasso #20 Jackie Robinson

I have a few Renata Galasso cards in my collection, though this Jackie is the only one in the frankenset so far.

21 1961 Golden Press Hall of Fame #21 Home Run Baker

Glad I could fit a 1961 Golden Press card into the project. Pretty sure this was a cheap card show pick-up a few years back.

22 1961-62 Parkhurst #22 Al Johnson

This was a Sportlots buy specifically for the frankenset. I basically just wanted an excuse to snag an old Parkhurst hockey card. Al Johnson played in all 70 of the Red Wing's games during the '60-'61 season, but that was the majority of his NHL career. The caption for the comic reads "Sure the engine's in the back - Why do you ask?" and then again in French.

23 1963 Topps Bazooka All-Time Greats #23 Jimmy Collins

Another old-timey baseball player, got this Bazooka card in a 2019 COMC order. Oh hey, have you been enjoying the backgrounds on my photos here? I found a couple fabric sample binders recently and thought I might use them to spice up card images on the blog for a post like this.

24 1978 SSPC New York Yankees Yearbook #24 Bucky Dent

The back recaps his 1977 season, though of course it was Bucky's performance in late '78 that ended up being his legacy. Funny that the front shows him choking up and even the scoreboard seems to be saying he's an easy out.

25 1936 Carreras Famous Airmen & Airwomen #25 Amelia Earhart

Scored this neat Amelia Earhart mini a few years ago after going on a tangent while looking for Howard Hughes stuff. Cool to have a card from her "playing days" and glad I could find a home for it providing some pop for the third page in the frankenset.

26 1957-58 Topps #26 Ed Litzenberger

Like with the earlier hockey card, I was just looking for some variety for the frankenset and found an old Topps hockey card to fill an open slot. Love working in non-baseball Topps designs that I'm not very familiar with and otherwise wouldn't really have a place in my collection. While not a name that rings a bell for me (I don't really know hockey), Wikipedia tells me Litzenberger is the only player in North American hockey history to win six straight pro hockey championships (Stanley Cup in 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964, and the Calder Cup in 1965 and 1966). Impressive! Also: "He helped instill a winning attitude as a member of the Black Hawks after having been traded from a first-place to a last-place team after noting a defeatist attitude among the players. Some of his teammates were satisfied with a tie. He reminded them that a tie was not a win and not worth celebrating."

That reminds me.. Anybody watch the Shoresy show on Hulu? Really funny hockey-themed show (spun-off from another very funny Canadian show called Letterkenny).

27 1935 Ardath Film, Stage and Radio Stars #27 Leslie Howard

The third mini of the page closes us out for today. I'm drafting up this post wondering why this guy looks so familiar... Oh, of course! He played Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939), which I recently watched for the second time in my life. That's cool. I don't watch a ton of old movies, but try to catch a classic from time to time.

Recap

It's a solid page overall, though maybe a little too baseball-heavy. I might try swapping somebody out for a football or basketball card someday.

Current priority for this frankenset is finding suitable cards numbered 29, 30, and 34, as those are still vacancies on the fourth page. But hey, guess I don't have to worry about posting that page until 2023, so no rush, right?! lol. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed checking out a few random old cards with me.