Sunday, July 30, 2017

Too Cool For Words..and an OPC Update


Thought I'd post a few fun cards from the 1970 Topps set...and these are Topps, not O-Pee-Chees!!

That Lowell Palmer card had been shown on plenty of blogs but it's always worth another look. There have been other players shown wearing shades on baseball cards (my fave is the '59 Topps Ryne Duren) but Palmer's opaque beauties made it look like he had just come from having his eyes dilated.

Palmer, of course, appeared on other cards wearing his sunglasses. The always entertaining Fleer Sticker Project has posted those and many other photos of the righthander. He has to be one of the most discussed career five game winners in history.

Willie McCovey is another guy (like Warren Spahn) who never seemed to have a lousy card. This 1970 is one of his best and IMHO one of the best cards in the set.


Nothing really remarkable about this Rich Morales card other than the great look it gives at one of my favorite uniforms, the White Sox' roadies from 1969/70.


I always get a little twinge of nostalgia when I see a card with the iconic Yankee Stadium scoreboard on it. Fritz Peterson may be the only reason I ever visit Facebook. He posts constantly and always has some fun stories and memories to share.


Finally this George Scott brought a smile to my face almost as big as his. I can imagine Boomer being interrupted by some goofing teammates around the batting cage while the Topps photographer waited for him to turn back to the job at hand.  I really like this one. And it's one of the few that I don't remember from back when this set was fresh.


And I'll wrap up with a word on my set building 'setback'. In my last post I discussed my discovery that some of the cards I purchased in the starter lot that launched this set build turned out to be O-Pee-Chees. The final tally ended up at 47(!!!), all numbered between 460 and 550.

 After a day or two of considering my options I decided that a 'hybrid' set, as several folks referred to it as, would be unacceptable. Just before typing this post I spent an hour on COMC picking up Topps versions of the OPCs. I paid between $0.41 and $1.25 for nearly all of them. The two Mets cards seemed to carry a 'NY tax'. The cheapest acceptable Al Weis card ran me almost $2 which upped my average cost. The only two cards which ran me more than that were Tony Oliva and Bob Gibson. The Topps Gibby I grabbed cost $5 and is actually an upgrade over the OPC one that came in the starter lot.

Bottom line is that I have solved my issue for under $45. Of course that's money I could have used to knock off several more high numbers but I'm considering it a lesson learned. And there's always a chance that I will offset my 'losses' by selling the OPCs and/or working something out with my dealer buddy who sold them to me in the first place. That'll be something that'll be discussed at next Saturday's hotel show. Stay tuned.

3 comments:

  1. Palmer was still wearing those shades on his 1971 card!

    As you know, back in the day players had to have off-season jobs to make ends meet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just got done going through the 1970 set for my countdown of the greatest cards of the '70s. Palmer is definitely in. Scott and McCovey are "possibles".

    ReplyDelete
  3. I recently cleared off a bookshelf in my office for graded versions of cheap, cool, cards (which I'll share tomorrow on my blog). Might have to see if there's a cheap Palmer out there for my collection.

    ReplyDelete