Card Show Quarterboxing from the 70s

The recap from my vintage-heavy haul from this past weekend's card show continues into the 70s now. I'm not in a big hurry, but I'd like to eventually finish a run of Topps flagship spanning the entire decade, so there are plenty of cards for me to pick up. While 25¢ per card is a decent price, I am hoping to get most of the commons knocked out through trades rather than purchases, plus I didn't want to take the time away from digging to check my lists to see if I needed each card, so I pretty much stuck to cards that caught my eye, either with a well-known player or neat photo or whatever. And some of these cards I've already got, but figured I'd build up my tradable vintage cache a little, not to mention possibly upgrade here and there.

Took me a while to warm to 1970 Topps with its blah design, but with photos featuring bat racks, big all-star rookie trophies, and bat carts plus big all-star rookie trophies... you kinda gotta love it.

Another thing '70 Topps has going for it: Pilots! Here, you can see the contrast between their regular season uniforms (left) and the simpler spring training uniforms.

 Accidentally grabbed a couple Tiants. And I already have at least a couple copies of that Hoyt, but couldn't pass it up.

Curt Flood famously never played for the Phillies, going to court over the trade and starting the fight for free agency in baseball.

Rounding out 1970 with some HOFers. Would like to upgrade Red with a better centered copy someday. Bunning is in good shape. Santo has a crease in the upper right, but it's a high number that books for $10+ according to TCDB, so it was still a solid buy for a quarter.

Moving onto 1971.. I've already finished this set, but I've got plenty of beaters in there I'd like to upgrade. I didn't refer to my list, just guessed. I guessed right with Willie Horton, as my old copy had rounded corners. I was already good with Jim Northrup, though. There are 3 variations of this card: no splotch on right, gray splotch on right, and (not shown here) black splotch on right. Some checklists might group both splotches together as one error, but there are definitely two distinct variations if you ask me. The splotch version goes for $7+ according to COMC. Both up for trade.

Sanguillen is a nice looking card. Is he filling out the lineup card or signing an autograph? Maybe it's his contract extension with Topps.. that'd be funny to have as the picture on a card.
Matty Alou is a high number.

A few horizontal cards to close out 1971 Topps.

Found one Kellogg's card in the quarterbox: Cesar Tovar from 1971.

Four Hall of Famers for my '72 Topps setbuild.

Some more '72s. Unmarked vintage checklists are always a good buy for a quarter.

1973 Topps is another set I've completed, but grabbed a few cards hoping they might be upgrades. I remember team cards were often tricky to find in good shape when I was building my set, so added these 4 to my stack. Turns out only the Red Sox needed to be upgraded, though.

And 3 more I didn't need to upgrade, it turns out. :( There are two Bench/Allen LL cards in the set: HR leaders and RBI leaders. I can never remember which one I need up upgrade. It's RBI leaders. Seems like I'm always coming across the HR leaders card but never RBI leaders.. so frustrating! I've got like a page's worth of that damn HR leaders card at this point, yet still only one RBI leaders card and it has an ugly printing flaw on it.

I didn't snag much from the mid 70s. Didn't need the '74 but might need it for the Brock PC. The Dodgers card was an upgrade. Gaylord has a crease, and it's OPC, so it'll go into the PC, not the setbuild.

And these last few close out my 70s pickups. I already have the KC Killebrew (in both my set and PC of Killer), but no way I'm passing up that legendary short-term stop sunset card for a quarter. I'll check if it's an upgrade for either, but otherwise up for trade.

That wraps up the vintage portion of my card show haul. I'll likely get another post out soon with the modern cards I got, though digging through the cache of cheap vintage was easily the highlight of the show for me.

Swinging 70s with Mark Hoyle and more wantlist updates

I pulled a Red Sox auto in my pair of 2018 Archives boxes that caught Mark Hoyle's eye and he dug up some 70s needs for me to swap for it.

Some big names in here to check off my '75 setbuild. And they're all in pretty nice shape, with the possible exception of the Schmidt.

Nolan Ryan's cards are typically tough to track down for 70s sets, so it's always much appreciated to score them in trades.

Nice lot of '74s, too, including a couple HOFers. I'm now at 84.45% complete with this set. (wantlist link). If I eventually receive the lot Dominicfdny said he'd send me, I should be pretty close to knocking this one out soon.

Mark also hooked me up with a bunch of '74 team checklists. I'm now only missing the A's and Red Sox to complete this insert set, though ideally I would like to upgrade them all to unmarked backs, and I currently only have the Padres in such condition.

Big thanks for the trade, Mark! Your return is on the way.

- - ---o

On the topic of my 70s setbuilds, a couple things I wanted to mention:

When I originally built 1971 Topps, I was operating under the mode of "I don't care at all about condition" and as such, I've got cards in there with mustaches drawn on faces, scribbled out team names, and chunks of corners missing from cards. I know it's a condition-sensitive set, and I knew I'd never have a "PSA-caliber" set or anything so I just wanted to be able to technically say I have the complete set. Now these few years later, I'm thinking I'd like to try getting my set into a little more respectable condition, and I finally got around to going through my set and noted which cards are in suboptimal condition. I ended up with 424 cards that I would like to upgrade, which is well over half the set. While I don't plan to actively hunt down upgrades at the moment, I'd definitely be down for landing them in trades, and my 1971 Topps wantlist has recently been updated to identify upgrades wanted. So if you've got any available '71s in solid shape (don't have to be perfect), please take a look and get in touch if you'd like to trade.

The other thing to mention is that my 1979 Topps setbuild officially kicks off today. Yep, I've made a wantlist and it's now live: My 1979 Topps wantlist. Thanks to starter lots from traders, I hit the ground running (29.16% complete out the gate) and this one shouldn't be too tough for me to put together, with really just the Ozzie rookie being a somewhat tricky card to snag.

This leaves only 1970 Topps and 1972 Topps as the only sets from the decade that I don't have wantlists from up yet. And well, ok, now I do because I just added those in their entireties to my TCDB wantlist. This weekend, I'll try to check off the couple dozen cards I already have from each set. I know they'll be tough, with their pesky high numbers and names like Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Ryan, etc, so those will be long-term collecting projects that I don't plan to focus on until I've finished a few of the other sets I've got in the works. But I've got wantlists up now for hopeful trading purposes.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

the post with the most

I'm still getting caught up with everybody's blog posts I didn't have a chance to read many while I was on my recent trip to Louisville. I couldn't bare to just skip them, so I'm at least trying to skim.

I'm also trying to get through a backlog of things to post about, so this may be a big post as I try to make up some ground.

A few random bullet points:

• New glow-in-the-dark cards on the market?! Yes, it seems 2017 Allen & Ginter has a mini insert set called Constellations that glow in the dark. Neat idea! I'm definitely interested in those, so please let me know if you have any to trade!
• Looks like the National is going on right now in Chicago. I've never been, but maybe one of these years. Out of the 3 or 4 locations the convention cycles between, Chicago would probably be my best bet since I've got family around there. Maybe next time. Wish it'd come out further west.
• Though I lived most of my life in San Diego, I never attended Comic Con. That's kind of a regret of mine. Now it's too big and crazy that I wouldn't really even want to. So many people.
• Speaking of a lot of people, I attended the Oregon Brewers Festival yesterday evening on the Portland waterfront. That was pretty fun and I got to check out a lot of interesting beer. Among the more memorable was Coconut Curryiocity (Old Town Brewing Co.) that the group I was with didn't care for but I really liked; and another curry one, Dragon’s Milk (Thai Curry | Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer by New Holland Brewing Co.) was a boozy milk stout (11%); and Berry White (Fruit Wheat Beer by Vanguard Brewing Co.)
• I really don't like those Funko Pop toys with their creepy dead eyes.
• I made good progress reading Ball Four on the flight / in the airport. Got through the chapters covering month of March. Great book so far. I probably should have read it long ago, but I'm not much of a reader (short attention span).
• Have you guys been hearing about the big eclipse next month? It will pass through Oregon and we're expecting possibly the worst traffic day ever here in Portland thanks to an influx of a couple million people into the state hoping to check out the neat sky thing. Yeah, I think I'm gonna stay home from work that day. Personally I'm more excited about the glow-in-the-dark Constellation cards than the actual sky thing. Again, please send me those cards!

I'm still catching up on incoming trade packages. Let's check out one that arrived shortly before I left for my trip. It's from Hunter Hoffman at the new blog Brave Country Cards. It was my first time trading with him (and I gotta admit I hadn't read his blog), so I wasn't sure what to expect. It consisted of a few team bags with "junk" showing, so I worried for a moment that it was gonna be one of those packages where I'm lucky if I find a couple cards I actually need. But thankfully those commons were just there for protection, and there was some terrific stuff between them.

Like this awesome 6-card lot of Adrian Beltre cards. He got a bunch of attention just recently for his stunt moving the on-deck circle and getting tossed from the game because of it. Gotta love the guy!

Here we've got a couple cool fishfractors and numbered Thome cards.

Great cards of notable pitchers.

Incredible Jake Peavy lot here. He's taken the 2017 season off so far due to personal reasons, but intends to pitch again at some point.

Some Red Sox legends.

Kirby! My recently revived Puckett PC is coming along nicely thanks to lots like this.

Nice pairs of McCutchen and Josh Donaldson.

Some big names here, highlighted by a gold #'d Junior.

Some Bowman kids.

Inserts/parallels of big boppers.

¡Ay, muchacho! Machado in the house.

And we wrap up the package with a shiny trio of familiar faces to Padres fans.

Great stuff, Hunter! Blew me away. Now I've got the challenge of putting together a worthy return package. I'll get on that shortly! I'm also following Braves Country Cards now and will update my side blogroll soon.

- - ---o

Let's squeeze another trade package into this post. Remember The Turrdog, the mysterious reader in my Big Fun Game? He has quickly proven himself as a hell of a guy, first sending me a nice "thank you" package for his prize, now surprising me with a flat-rate box.

My pending 1980 Topps setbuild is looking good with this lot of probably ~75 cards featuring some solid names such as a Dave Stieb RC. Once I find some time one of these days, I need to collate what I've got and get a list figured out.

I'm also toying with the idea of working on 1982 Topps at some point in the future, and now I've at least got my foot in the door with this lot of about 50 cards.

Ah, the "birth year" set for me. Sort of feels like an obligation to complete it someday. Not a bad lot here to get me started. I should have positioned the Fidrych card front and center instead of obscured and fuzzy in the back; it's definitely a classic. (But I'm afraid to argue with the Mad Hungarian there.)

I was actually born in the tail end of '77, so as P-town Tom suggested in a comment a while back, 1978 Topps probably has more of a claim to being the representative baseball card set of my entrance into the world. So, fine, screw it, I added '78 to my list of sets to potentially work on someday, too. Turdog helped boost up their numbers in my collection with this lot of 15 or so cards.

And I've already completed 1973 and 1971, but I'm sure I'll be able to pluck many upgrades out of these stacks. Mike Hegan is a player who didn't mean anything to me a week ago, but now I'm like, "Hey, he's in Ball Four! Cool!" haha. And that Dave Concepcion RC looks pretty sweet.

And we close out with this beauty from 1957 Topps.

I've now fittingly got 57 cards from '57, good for 13.67% complete. Still a ways to go, but slow and steady...

Thanks so much, Jeff! Big help for my setbuilds.. Very appreciated! I'll have to round up some stuff for you to return the favor.


Thanks again to Hunter, and to the rest of you all for reading. See ya next time.

Some quick follow-ups

'Member a couple weeks ago when Commishbob sent me a few vintage Hoyt Wilhelm cards? In his note he mentioned have one other Hoyt dupe for me but he couldn't find it. Well, he found it and shot it my way in a PWE earlier in the week.

1980 TCMA. Familiar photo, but it looks great.

Along for the ride in the PWE were these 3 mascot stickers. They're a little perplexing because I don't necessarily collect mascots, but hey, I'll take 'em.

Thanks, Bob!

It was a slow week for me trade-wise, and those were the only cards I got from the cardsphere this past week.

- - - ----o

'Member back around the holidays when I sent out rip cards with mini custom magnets in them?

They were numbered to 25. I couldn't bare to give away a Christmas Card, so I made card 12/25 for myself. I plan to leave mine unripped, but it's there in case of emergency. (It's a "Pretty Girls" A&G style mini of Kate Upton topless!)

In case you were wondering, here's the checklist of all 25 custom rip cards: (with links to their posts when available.)

1. Night Owl - Cey
2. Tony Burbs - Santo
3. John Miller - John Elway
4. Bo Rosny - Jeter
5. Raz - Danica
6. Daniel Wilson - Goldy
7. Lost Collector - Tino
8. Jedi Jeff - Billy Pierce
9. Stealing Home - Jackie
10. Lonestar/Twitch - Fergie Jenkins
11. Corky - Junior (A)
12. [me!]
13. SCC - Junior (B)
14. Matthew Scott - Clemente
15. Tony L - Yount
16. Wes Moore - Willingham
17. Dimebox Nick - Hoyt Wilhelm
18. P-Town - Sandberg
19. Shoebox Shane - Xander
20. Mark Hoyle - Yaz
21. Arbitrary Brian - Kirby
22. Too Many Dennis - Whittaker/Trammell
23. $30 Robert - Joe Carter
24. Tim B - Mantle
25. Fuji - Gwynn

Apparently #11 got lost in the mail, unfortunately, but otherwise they're all accounted for and the recipients seemed to like them. These were a lot of fun to whip up, and I hope I can think up something else neat to do this coming December, though I suppose I've got plenty of time.

- - - ---o

Member back when I completed 1971 Topps, but there were still a couple known minor variations I wanted to track down? Well, I scored them recently..

It's the 6th Series checklist with the bit of black shading on the front of the helmet, and the Vicente Romo card without the two dashes over the back picture. So now I feel like my 1971 set is extra complete.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Joy of a Completed Set: 1971 Topps, for real this time

I thought I had put this set to bed late last year. But when I got around to collating it, there was one card missing...

Pesky Vicente Romo and his silky hat. Snatched it up in my latest COMC order. So now my set's complete. Nice!

I'm not going to go all out and show off every card, or even my favorites. If you want to see every card front and back, Scott Crawford On Cards did that in a jumbo post a while ago. The 3 above cards are all "hero numbers" ending in 00, so they were easy to dig out and snap a quick pic of. As far as my favorites off the top of my head, I love the Dick Allen, Vida Blue, Clemente, Garvey rookie.. and of course many of the action shots like Munson and the Royal Crown Ryan.

When I was wrapping up my set, I decided to go all-in and grab as many variations as I could to make my set extra complete. So I'm gonna highlight those variations now. Thanks to the Trading Card Database for enlightening me on most of these.

Circling back to the last card I needed to finish my set, this is an uncorrected error, as Romo's birthday is actually 4/12/43, apparently a mistake Topps made on most (all?) of his cards. Also, see those two marks above the photo? That's actually a variation present on most of the 1971 #723 cards out there, not just a flaw on this particular copy. I haven't bothered getting the more scarce variation without the dashes yet, but maybe someday. (As a high-number, it'll likely run you a few bucks.) [update: I've since got it.]

I got lucky on this one, as unbeknownst to me until looking into these errors, the card I already had in my set was the "stadium light airbrushed out behind ear" variation (right), and that's the expensive one. I was able to grab the common "troll ear" variation for under a buck from COMC.

Check out the big black splotch on the left. That's not just a random marker mishap by a previous owner of this card, but rather a strange variation present on some copies of Jim Nash here.

More splotchy madness! I completed the Jim Northrup variations trifecta: black splotch, grey splotch ("scratched out"), and no splotch.

Ready for the boring ones? It's checklist variation time!

Take a good look at the helmet. The one on the left has white shading on the back of the helmet. The one on the right has black shading on the back of the helmet, plus a little black line over the ear. Also, on the back, the "white shading" checklist has the card number (123) on the bottom far right, while the "line over ear" checklist has the number centered on the bottom. Turns out I already had the variation in with my dupes, so I was all set with this one. (There might be a third variation that features the "line over ear" front with the "card number on the right" back, though if that exists it must be pretty rare because I can't find it on COMC.)

This is a subtle variation, with just the line over the ear on one of the cards, and slightly different shading on the back of the helmet.

This is the high-number checklist. Again, the shading on the helmet is the difference on the front, and the "no line over ear" card is missing the copyright info on the back. There's a third variation that's harder to find that I might track down someday where there's some black shading on the front of the helmet.. but being a high-number checklist, and a rare variation at that, it's not cheap, and I can't feel good about paying a lot of money for a frickin' checklist variation. [update: I've since scored myself one.]

So there are the 1971 Topps errors/variations I'm aware of. If you know of others I've missed, well, keep them to yourself because I don't want to have to hunt them down. LOL [update: A comment on this post alerted me to one I've missed: the common version of #85 Billy Grabarkewitz features a red dot to the right of his head, but there's a tougher variation that features a light yellow dot instead. Turns out I've got that one, but need the common red dot card.]

One of these days I plan to go through my set and make note of the really poor condition cards that I would like to eventually upgrade (e.g. cards with rips or writing), though it won't be a priority and I have no illusions of this ever being a "high grade" set. And I know some readers have encouraged me to page the set, and perhaps I will someday, but I'm not really a binder guy. So for now, I'm happy with them in the long box. At 752 cards (plus the handful of variations), this is a huge set, so it's quite the accomplishment for me to hang my hat on for a moment before once more unto the breach, turning my set-collecting attention to 1965 Topps, a set I'm currently at 72% with. [update: I've since completed '65 Topps. Woo!]