1970 Topps Seattle Pilots....wait, not so fast...

Yesterday I was pulling and scanning a bunch of the Seattle Pilots from my 1970 Topps binder for a post I intended to do today. And then I noticed something. Check out the fronts of two of the cards:

Nothing unusual there. My post was going to revolve around the fact that the Pilots never took the field as the 'Pilots' in 1970. As we all know they became the Brewers shortly before opening day and Topps never acknowledged that fact in the set, not even in their late series which was compiled after the season started.

I was also going to explore the variety of uniforms that appear on the Pilots in the set. I loved their look and always thought that their unis were terrific.

But as I put these cards face down on my scanner's platen something odd jumped out at me. Take a look:

Yup, the Buzz Stephen card isn't a 1970 Topps card at all. It's an O-Pee-Chee! And that isn't the only one I have in my '70 "Topps" binder. Turns out nearly 20 on the cards in my original lot purchase are O-Pee-Chees. Yikes.

Hard to believe that it took me this long to see it. In my defense I have been working off a checklist and putting my newly acquired cards for this set in a storage box. I really hadn't flipped through it very much. When it was offered to me the possibility of there being OPCs in the mix never occurred to me.

It came already in the binder in pages so it isn't a matter of me not noticing when I paged it up. I flipped thru the cards that were there, saw the nice condition they were in, figured out that the cost was under 50 cents a card said 'OK'. And let me say right now that I'm sure my dealer friend who sold it to me was unaware of this as well. I guess we both share some responsibility here.

It's disappointing for sure. I thought I was less than 25 cards from completing the set but now it is close to 45. Now I face a quandary.

Do I just finish off the cards I need and call it a day? After all, the fronts are identical. It 'looks' like the 1970 Topps set. I won't ever be selling it so it really has no effect on 'value'. When it's finished I can page thru the binder and enjoy the set just as much, including the cartoons. And the final entry in the 'fuhgeddaboudit' column is added expense. While none of the Canadian interlopers are high numbers I figure it'll cost me $50 to $75 to replace them with their Topps equivalent. That includes the one star card involved, Bob Gibson.

OTOH...I suspect knowing that my binder contains a 'hybrid' set will bug me. The first thing I did when I discovered the Stephen card was run to eBay to find a Topps replacement. 'Fixing the problem' was my gut reaction. Even before I thought to check the rest of the cards.

In the grand scheme of things (and even my hobby enjoyment) this is small potatoes. "First World problem" as they like to say in FB comments. Right now my plan is to finish the cards I need and then assess where I am as far as 'repeal and replace'.     :-/      Stay tuned for that.

And today more than most days your comments/thoughts are very much welcome.

---------EDIT-------

In response to one of the comments I thought looking at the two different backs of the same player would be interesting. I threw this together in a hurry but it serves the purpose:

I failed to mention earlier what is pretty obvious in both scans of the backs...OPC was printed on a different, darker cardboard.

Bargain Bin Packs

After missing my cherished monthly hotel card show for awhile I was eager to return to it last Saturday. I had no real specific goals other than to hit the bargain boxes and add some 'bloggable' material. And I think I did that. I brought home some vintage stuff, some cards I simply thought were fun and some stuff I only bought because it ended up costing me about 20 cents apiece. That latter category would include these three unopened packs of beat up junk that I nabbed on a whim.

I don't remember these '91 O-Pee-Chee cards from when they were new.  But it's not a bad looking set actually. I'm sure someone out there knows if the 'Premier' designation means that these were something beyond a base set.

There isn't much to the backs, other than four separate logos. I had to look up Willie Wilson to see how long he played for Oakland. Turns out it was two seasons following his 15 year stint with the Royals. 

Side note: Did you know that there is a Willie Wilson running for president? I sure didn't. 

EDIT: Joe Shlabotnik's comment on this set got me to digging and I found a bit of background on this '91 OPC Premier set. This comes from The Cardboard Connection site's OPC page:

While O-Pee-Chee produced their traditional Topps-like set in 1991, they also expanded to a second standalone line. 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier Baseball was one of the most hyped sets of the year, based largely on the success of 1990-91 O-Pee-Chee Premier Hockey. The quality was noticeably higher. So was the initial price tag. But like most every set from 1991, it was vastly overproduced. Today, 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier Baseball can be found extremely cheap. Historically, it's important because it marked a branching out for the brand. O-Pee-Chee Premier Baseball continued in 1992 and 1993 apart from the Topps line.

The same dealer's box yielded a North Carolina pack from the early 1990. I have no connection to UNC and so I figured that if I didn't get a Michael Jordan card I would get eight cards of strangers.

And I got a Jordan. If I was producing these I'd make sure there was a Jordan in each pack.

That's not a bad scan of the back below. it actually is that 'faded'. I don't know if it turned that way over time of if that's how it was intended to be. This Jordan, btw, is the only color pic used in the eight cards I got. Another thing that struck me is that one of the cards was #179. Seems like a lot of cards for a college set but the Trading Card Database has the checklist and the set runs over 200 cards strong including some 'specials'. 

The third pack was Pro Set hockey 91/92. Pro Set could really churn out product back then. But the thing about it was they had some excellent looking sets. The problem was people just got sick of seeing so many of them.

Not much to say about these other than they look pretty good design-wise, the ones I scanned featured some uninspired pics and the pack yielded no Rangers. But for the two dimes it cost me I won't gripe I guess.


Another side note: I read someplace that the Leafs are re-designing their uniforms. Really? The Leafs have a classic look. Even the sort of 'modernized' look that Wendel Clark is wearing from 25 years ago is pretty sweet. If they take the 'leaf' off the sweaters I'm going to be upset. And so will be lots of Leafs fans I'm sure.

That's it for the packs I got. But I went home with lots more that I need to finish scanning and post.

Hockey, yes hockey... the 1974-75 OPC Howe Family card

This is a card I've had on my wantlist for a long time. I'd forget about it for long stretches and then someone would show off a Gordie Howe card and I'd be inspired to look around for one in my wheelhouse....decent condition at a moderate price.

It happened most recently when Fuji was gifted with this fantastic Oh-Pee-Chee Howe. I immediately went out and snagged the 74-75 OPC Howe Family card you see above. The WHA in general and the Aeros in particular were just a blast to be a fan of during the 70s. I've related a bit of my Aeros history before. Here it is cut-and-pasted:

Maybe the most fun I've had in sports venues was during the heyday of the WHA Houston Aeros during the 1970s when they played in the decrepit old Sam Houston Coliseum in downtown Houston. Those games were just a blast. The WHA was a rough and tumble league of NHL castoffs and has-beens mixed in with a few young and established stars that the league somehow was able to sign away from the NHL with big money contracts. The franchises seemed to shift every year and I recall more than one team folding during a season.

The Aeros had Gordie Howe and his sons and they captured back-to-back Avco Cups in the first few seasons of the franchise's existence. My college buddies and I loved those teams and going to the games. How could you not? The rival Minnesota Fighting Saints always lived up to their name (the 'fighting' part, not the 'saints' part) and building rocked when they were in town. In their second year they had a guy named Gordie Gallant (isn't that the coolest hockey name ever?) who was a cheap shot artist and enforcer who would whip the Aeros' fans into a frenzy.

At the Coliseum the visiting team would have to walk a gauntlet of fans between periods and at games end, trudging on their skates up a rubber mat along a path formed by a couple pieces of rope to the locker-room. It passed right through the concession area. Fans would give the Fighting Saints (we had another 'F' word that we used instead of 'Fighting') a real going over. I'm surprised that none of us ever got clobbered with a stick or kicked with a skate.

After three or four seasons the Aeros moved to the shiny new Summit (now Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church)  and a lot of the fun went out of it. Oh we still loved Aeros hockey but losing the Coliseum took away some of the charm of the whole thing. Eventually the NHL absorbed four of the WHA teams but not our beloved Aeros.

One last WHA story... It occurred the day after the Aeros won their first Avco Cup. A good friend who worked at a department store that had a tie-in with the team was headed into work when he spotted the Avco Cup trophy sitting all by itself on the loading dock. Just sitting there apparently after being delivered by the team for a promo. No one was paying any attention to it as it sat just feet from the morning downtown workers hustling by. Hard to imagine the Stanley Cup in that spot.

My copy of the card isn't bad at all for about 10 bucks. It's off-center off-centre but otherwise just fine for me. Here's a short video segment showing Gordie Howe in action with the Aeros:

And speaking of hockey...yesterday in Target I wasted $2.49 on a pack of "Upper Deck Hockey Something or Other".  I grabbed it because I was bored waiting for my wife to finish her shopping and there was nothing else of interest on the shelves. The pack contained seven cards of guys I've never heard of, the best of which is this one showing this guy knocking the warm-up pucks off the dasher onto the ice.

The eighth card is of Phil Esposito, ringleader of the Evil Empire. That was my perspective on the Bruins circa 1970. Nowadays I think Rangers fans just look at them as another team. Another byproduct of the growth of the NHL from 6 to 45 teams or whatever they have these days.

Blogger is making me nuts... and two Pierce items

Man this Blogger thing has thrown me a curve or two. 

Problem One: If you look to the right you can see that my 'Blog Lists' have no headings. I had "My Other Blog" and "I Also Contribute Here" above the '59 and '63 blog links. Those are gone. My "Daily Reading" headings are gone, too. I made a crappy graphic to sub for the heading but it sucks. I've noticed that some other blogs are suffering the same small but annoying malady. Blogger claims to be aware of the issue. 

Problem Two: I have always received emails alerting me to comments left on my posts. For the last week or so those emails have been erratic, at best. This holds true for both my blogs. I have been checking when I think of it but over on my '59 Topps blog I have several knowledgeable commentators who from time to time comment on an old post, adding info or corrections or questions. I have no way to see these with checking through almost 600 posts. Turns out it is Google that is shuffling all my blog related emails into the spam folder. Why this started I don't know. I have recovered them all. 

This is pretty discouraging. But it's not going to stop me from posting, that's for sure. And here we have my two latest Billy Pierce items. Up first is a 1960 O-Pee-Chee Tattoo. I've had this on my checklist for quite awhile. And when I picked it up I thought I was done with Pierce tattoos. No, not quite. As I dug I found that there is another Pierce tattoo in the set. It features his portrait. And not only that, but there are Topps versions of the same items. 

These things are usually pretty expensive but this one came cheap givien it is only one panel from what was a complete gum wrapper. But this is the $$ panel so I'm glad to have it.

I missed out on both versions of the Topps tattoos on eBay Wednesday evening. I got out-sniped by the same buyer on each. I wish I had bid higher as these went pretty cheap (about $10 or $11). I'll keep working on them. One guy is asking $40 or Best Offer for the Topps portrait tattoo. I have a lowball offer on it and am waiting for him to reject it. 

Here is the tattoo next to my other new item just for the sake of size comparison. 

It's the 1989 Swell Gum Baseball Greats Pierce. Pierce is a willing signer and auto'd items don't carry much premium. For that reason I'll bid or buy if something pops up that I need even if it's signed. The picture is a tightly cropped version of a photo that appears on a lot of Pierce cards. 

I Give Up...

... on the NHL season. I don't know who deserves the blame, and I don't care. I just know that last season was a fun one and I thought the NHL had some momentum. Now, hell, I've lost interest.

I just hope that after the January games are officially cancelled I can get my money back on the tickets I bought through Stub Hub to the Rangers-Stars game in January.

Good Ol' Gump Worsley seems to share my feelings, yes?

That's a 1970 O-Pee-Chee card, btw. One of my few non-Ranger vintage hockey cards.