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.

Rod's card show bonus box

At last weekend's card show, I didn't return home with just the stack of vintage cards I bought, but also got a nice box given to me by my bud Rod from the blog Padrographs. I had a card for him, plus stuff that gcrl and Fuji had sent me to give to Rod the next time I saw him, but I definitely got the better end of the deal.

With Rod being the king of Padres autographs, it shouldn't come as a surprise that he has some extras to throw my way. Some fun ones here, including fan favorite Kevin Kouzmanoff, current Friar Cory Spangenberg, and hot prospect Josh Naylor.

And of course there were plenty of neat Padres non-signed cards in the box, including a new Ozzie rookie reprint and some parallels.

I've never had much of 1999 Topps Stadium Club, so this lot was cool to check out.

Nice lot of 2018 Bowman.

Other than the blaster I picked up a while back (and some glowing minis I haven't gotten around to posting about), I haven't gotten in much 2018 Ginter yet, so these were appreciated.

I thought this sharp looking Willie Davis might be put toward my future setbuild of 1977 Topps, but nope, it's actually a blank back, so it'll instead go with my Padres miscellany. But the 70s vintage is just warming up.

And a bunch of additions to my 1978 Topps set! I haven't done the math on it, but I think I'm somewhere around halfway complete.

Oh man! It had been nearly a year since I last updated my 1973 Topps spreadsheet (previous update: 10/25/2017), and while I've technically completed the set, I would like to upgrade many of the lower-condition cards I've got in it. Rod took the time to go through my list and helped me upgrade 30+ cards.. very appreciated!

But the majority of the cards in the box was a terrific starter lot of 1974 Topps, a set I plan to focus on one of these days after I finish some of my other in-progress builds. Probably about half the set here, including some notable cards such as Willie Mays' swansong. Rod was kind enough to also include a duplicate Hank Aaron special #4, the last card from that subset I was missing in my Hammer PC, so now I've got one for the PC and one for the set.

Big thanks for the box, Rod! I'll dig up some cards for you to try to return the favor.

Various vintage variations? Yaz, please.

I was sorting my Yaz PC yesterday, pulling out dupes, and was just about to take out one of these 1969 deckle edge inserts when I noticed one didn't have the facsimile signature. Ooh.. Not a dupe! On closer inspection, the signature is there, just grey and very faint. I was a little perplexed by this and turned to COMC to see if they had variations of this one on there. Looks like the OPC versions have a grey signature instead of blue, but it's not this faint. Plus, the OPC deckles have blank backs, whereas these two...

...both have the standard Topps back. Is this is a "real" variation? Probably just a printing flaw, like the cyan coloring didn't make it onto this particular pressing. Regardless, I'll consider them different in my PC. If Mark Hoyle or anybody else has any info to share on these, please let me know.

As long as I'm turning this discovery into a blog post, I figured I'd add a couple other vintage variations I've stumbled upon recently. And hey, coincidentally, Yaz's Sox are also involved with these other two.

These 1973 Topps team checklists are the same on the front, but feature a minor difference on the back:

The left card has one asterisk at the bottom, while the right card has two. These are a known variation, but they somehow slipped by me when I was compiling my 1973 Topps checklist. I tried to be really "master set" thorough with it, getting all the known variations. So, damn it, I may have to reopen my "completed" 1973 Topps setbuild to hunt down the asterisk variations I'm missing. It won't be a high priority, but just something to try to eventually take care of. Anybody know if all teams have this variation, or just some of them?

I should hopefully be posting a "Joy of a Completed Set" post for 1965 Topps shortly after my latest COMC order arrives. There are only a couple '65 variations that I'm aware of, both checklists, the "Cannizzaro/C.Cannizzaro" variation, and one which has slightly bolder text than its counterpart. But I think I found another "bold text" variation. Take a look and see if you agree:

Seems to me like the one on the bottom has bolder text. I think it's most obvious at "182":

There's some white space between the "2" and the blue border on one, while the other "2" actually crosses the plane into the blue. Not a big deal or anything, just something card collectors like us might find interesting. I'll include it in my set as like an unofficial variation / notable printing variance since I already have it, but I probably wouldn't bother tracking it down if I didn't.

Thanks for stopping by.

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.