Border Crisis

My 1971 set build has been a 'stealthy' one. I don't think I've posted anything about it on here other than putting my want list over in the sidebar. Over the last month, I've been knocking down some of the base cards and dipping my toe in the high number water.

I wasn't collecting this set in '71. I had gotten my fill of commuting across Houston to college classes and I was a dorm resident at this point. I was working at the Houston Post and had a couple of part-time campus jobs that helped with room and board. I was still heavily involved in sports (I worked for the Athletic Department and I certainly followed my favorite teams), but life was coming at me pretty fast and collecting wasn't a focus anymore.

I think I remember seeing this set when it was on the shelves but I'm sure I never owned any. And that's too bad because I've come to really enjoy it. It's certainly unique. The colors and photos pop off the black cards. There are plenty of stars in the checklist and my Orioles were coming off their 1970 title so the whole thing is right in my wheelhouse. That's the good part.

The bad parts are pretty well known among vintage collectors. A high number series with SPs and even a semi-high number series make this thing a bit more costly than you'd expect. And there are 752 cards to collect. But the killer is the black borders and how hard it is to find really nice cards that are not chipped and dinged. The little flaws that are inherent in most raw vintage cards just jump out at you in the '71 set.

Which makes me glad I'm not very concerned about card condition. I have a target in mind when I buy these things and it splits the difference between these two gems:

The Ron Bryant card is about as good a card as I can find in the stack that currently sits on my desk. The Campaneris represents to the low side. These two came from either COMC, the TriStar show, eBay or the last three hotel shows. LOL, I can't remember. I've really ramped up my purchases lately and I grabbed these things from a lot of different places.

I'm at about 83% give or take. I have about 600 of the 725 with about 30 needs coming from the low series (1 thru 5) and the rest being semi-high or high numbers.  I scanned some from this stack to show here:

I may take this Dierker to the next SABR meeting I attend. He's a semi-regular attendee. I sat across the table from him at my first meeting a few years ago. I always have a few signed cards in my sets and to get one signed in person is the best way. He's got what I first thought was a golf shirt on under his jersey. But I think it's just one of those windbreakers with cut off sleeves.

The odds are most definitely against it but I'd like to think this photo of Bobby Murcer was taken on the day my friend and I saw him hit four dingers in a doubleheader against the Indians.  I know the Topps photographer was there because Vada Pinson's card photo was taken that day, the single most fun day I've ever experienced at a ballpark.

Murcer's card is a classic and the familiar Yankee Stadium background shows up again on Yaz' card.

My scanner did this Jackson card a favor. The edges are not as sweet as they look in the pic. But that A's gold and green uni is as cool as it gets.

John Bateman was playing as part of Eddie Feigner's The King and His Court four-man softball team when I saw them in the late 70s.

Pete Rose is just a bit off-center, but then again, aren't we all?

Roger Repoz was one in a long line of Yankee outfield prospects who was supposed to replace Mickey Mantle. Jack Reed, Ross Moschito, and Steve Whitaker were others.

This Ray Culp card shows him wearing that Red Sox jersey with the red outlined lettering. That always looks weird to me. This has to be a 1970 spring training shot since the 100 Year MLB patch that was worn in 1969 isn't on Culp's sleeve. Another windbreaker here, as well.

Speaking of Culp... he had some really good years for the Red Sox. they fleeced the Cubs when they traded for him. I think there's a chance the Cubs could have held off the Mets in '69 had they still had Culp in their rotation.

And here is Dick Billings because why the hell not?

And finally, The Major.

Another neat Yankee Stadium shot. My lasting memory of Ralph Houk and that place came from July of 1966. My mom put me on a train into NYC that afternoon and my father met me at Penn Station after he got off work. Off to the ballpark we went. Usually, we made it in time for the first pitch but this was a weekday doubleheader and we arrived in the middle of the first game.

Here's how it ended...

Of course, Houk, the fans, the Yankees (and me) went nuts. What I recall is that Houk came out to bring the lineup card to the umps for the second game and he was still arguing. So much so that he got tossed right there at the plate before the game even started. Good times!

My '71 set chase will pick up once I'm done with the last dozen 1961's I'm looking for. I have some of the inserts that were included in packs that year. Those were the coins (which I love) and the Scratch-offs (which I don't). There are only a handful of known variations and none of them are particularly notable. I have no plans to grab any of them.

Oh, I almost forgot...Night Owl collected and blogged this baby over several years and he did a great job with it. If you haven't already checked it out you should go read some of his posts. Fun stuff.

Women's Day

Well, I'm always the last to know and as a result International Women's Day almost got by me. I'm lucky enough to have some wonderful women in my life..my wife, daughter, sister, and three terrific daughters-in-law.

I'll post a few scans I had that were intended for a larger post of entertainment cards which I had picked up recently. I haven't done any research so I'll just toss them up here with a link or two.

Shirley Temple, child star turned businesswoman and diplomat who became the US ambassador to Ghana and to Czechoslovakia. Later she served as Chief of Protocol of the United States.

This is from one of the numerous Dutch Gum sets that featured American and International stars. I'm still trying to pin it down exactly. EDIT: Found it. It's classified as the "P" set. I should have guessed.

Hall of Famer LaVern Baker, Rock and Roll/R&B singer who had several hits in the 50s and 60s. This card is from the 1960 Fleer Spins and Needles set.

She had a hit with the well known Jim Dandy in 1956.

And finally Eve Arden. I knew her as the sarcastic, wisecracking English teacher in Our Miss Brooks in the 50s. But she had a long and varied career as a Hollywood favorite.

This card is from the 1953 Topps Who-z-at Star? set.

Want to see what passed for cutting edge comedy in the 50s? Check out just the first few minutes of this episode of her show.

Happy International Women's Day. Remember..if it wasn't for a woman, you wouldn't be here.

Space Cards, G-Men ...and other weirdness

My Net54 grab-bag purchase and latest hotel show scrounging yielded some stuff I had no business adding to my collection. But it's some fun stuff and post-worthy (I guess).

These first two cards are from the 1957/58 Topps Space Card set. I had never seen these. A little digging turned up the fact that these cards, 88 in all, were recycled for another set, Target: Moon somewhat later. The dates of issue for some of these non-sport sets are sometimes murky. The Topps Archives blog does a great job of researching this sort of thing. These were also re-issued in England through Topps' agreement with A&BC. Some were also included in repacks and promotional tie-ins as late as 1968.

The artwork is uncredited as far as I can tell. I saw a Topps mainstay, Norm Saunders, credited for these on at least one reference page but checking Mr. Saunders' website finds no mention of them.

This is a fun one..astronauts playing checkers in space. Well, OK then.

Just for grins, I checked to see what putting this set together would cost, or if it was readily available already completed. Lots of listings for singles on eBay at prices from about $4 and up. One complete set, from a British seller, for over $450. I think I'll just enjoy these two in my non-sports binder.

And speaking of tough to put together...check out these next two cards. They are from the 1936 G-Men and Heroes of the Law set.

Gum, Inc. (aka Bowman) issued these as a skip-numbered (and probably unfinished) set of 168 cards. The card numbers run into the 400s. Some background and the known checklist is available here.

I blew these up so the backs could be read here. That's about as much text as I've ever seen on a card.

I'd guess that these were done to jump on the popularity of the Dick Tracy comic strip which premiered in the early 1930s. This page has a link to a slideshow of the whole set.

You can get a better idea of the size of these with this scan I did of one next to a standard Topps card.

Haven't had enough of guys with guns? My dealer and friend Daryll had a stack of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. cards in his non-sports box. I picked out a couple of Robert Vaughn examples. This is the best of the bunch.

I really enjoyed that show back in the day. But it wasn't my favorite...that honor goes to Combat!  I've posted a few of these cards previously but I think these two capture the main characters best:

Rick Jason as Lt. Gil Hanley...

..and Vic Morrow as Sgt. Chip Saunders.

Like everything else we enjoyed, my friends and I had debates on which character was 'the best' in the show. I was a Hanley devotee. Sadly, both actors died tragically.

I'm still not done with the oddballs. But I'll mix in a few baseball posts so both regular readers don't completely abandon ship. 

No Upgrade Needed!

Not long ago Shane, the Shoebox Legend himself, messaged me and asked if I'd be interested in a '61 Juan Marichal rookie which happened to be the last non-high number I lacked in that set. He warned me that it wasn't mint and there was some paper loss on the back. He'd picked it up at an antique store at a good price and thought I could use it until I found a better one.

Well, Shane has never looked through my vintage binders. 😁 If he had he'd have seen that a little back damage never stands between me and an open slot. And that's especially true when I'm down to just the most expensive open slot-fillers.

The Marichal card (and a few friends that came along for the ride) arrived Saturday and I'm happy to report that it's a fine fit in my 1961 set build. The damage is no big deal and the card is really in fine shape. I can think of several cards (I'm looking at you, 1960 Nellie Fox All-Star) that I have in sets with more significant issues than this sweet Marichal.

The fact that for my money (or maybe Shane's?) this is one of the cooler cards in the 1961 set.  Marichal always had a million dollar smile and it's shown off here.

I'm telling you if I had won this card 'flipping leaners' in the schoolyard at St. Mary's in Nutley N.J. in May of 1961 I'd have been thrilled.

 And Marichal finished off a binder page, a really nice binder page at that. He shares the top row with Hank Aaron and Dock Howser, the runner-up for AL RoY in 1961. The sweet Charlie Neal card is gravy.

It comes right before this one which I posted back in January.

Five Hall of Famers, three Rookie Star cards and that mis-numbered error Braves team card within 16 binder slots of each other.

Shane sent along some other cards as well. My most unlikely PC is Bobby Locke. I kicked that one off when I lucked into pulling a signed card in a Heritage pack a few years ago. After that, I added the few Topps cards that were available and some fun oddballs. I also had found a '68 buyback issued in 2015.

Packed with the Marichal were two more buybacks. I'm not sure which stamp was issued in which year but I'm sure I can find out easily enough.  Doh....this first one is a 2017.

This next one is stamped with the 75th-anniversary foil mark so Google tells me it's 2014.

Along with them were a few shiny Orioles. Cards are the only thing associated with the Orioles that does any shining lately.

Schoop will find a place in my fantasy player binder. This one boots out some plain jane Heritage card.

I miss JJ Hardy. And Chris Tillman is not on the Texas Rangers roster. Nor anyone else's as far as I can see. The two guys that came to the O's for Erik Beddard from Seattle in 2008, Tillman and Adam Jones, are without baseball work. Time marches on I guess.

Do I have to give up my Orioles fan club membership when I admit that I have no clue what Luis Matos did?

OK, Google to the rescue again...he played in Charm City for SEVEN SEASONS!! Who knew? Not me!

Soccer cards! Mbappé starred in the 2018 World Cup and plays professionally for Paris Saint-Germain. He's ridiculously talented. Paul Pogba, who did a Manny Machado-like reputation nose-dive over the past year, has had a nice resurgence under the new Man United manager. Thank God.

And this next card has a story, too. It was one of a pair that Shane used as a buffer on the outside of the stack he sent. Kind of like some eBay sellers will do. A 'bonus' with a job to do in a way. Well, this Kendrick went straight from the scanner to my fantasy football baseball (I had the fb one on my desk 😵) binder since I needed a card of him as an Angel to replace the (wrong team) Dodgers card that was in the binder. Yes, I am that anal when it comes to that collection.

Again, Shane...Thanks so much for the most generous trade package. It is appreciated.

You meet the best people in this hobby, yes?

Scan Dump Pt. 2...Meet the Beatles

In my Net54 grabbag was a stack of Beatles cards. They come from three of the SIX Beatles sets released by Topps in 1964. Yup, six Beatles sets, or about 1/20th of the number of baseball sets they will pump out in 2019.

I wish that these from my oddball lot had all come from one set. That way I could have something of a headstart on collecting one specific set. But no matter. For now, I just have my small collection all mixed up in a few binder pages.

First up is a fun card from the 1964 Beatles Diary set. The text on the back doesn't correspond with the photo. That comes from one of their Ed Sullivan show appearances. Speaking of which...if any show has ever claimed (and I'm sure they have) to have had a higher percentage of the country tuned in than Sullivan's Beatles shows, I call bullshit. 😉

I will never forget going to the Franklin Theater in my hometown to see the debut of A Hard Day's Night. It was lunacy. Girls screaming, crying and in general just carrying on. I could understand had it been a live show but it was a movie. Anyway, Topps made a set out of publicity stills, the 1964 Beatles Movie "A Hard Day's Night" cards.

Lennon and McCartney. Lennon vs. McCartney. Always good for a schoolyard debate. For the record, I was a Lennon guy.

 Here is a card from a set I remember. The 1964 Beatles Color cards. Another Ed Sullivan Show shot.

Here are the rest. Not much to add other than the fact that these cards made the package more fun.

The Boys. TV and radio always referred to them as 'The Boys'.

Gloomy Ringo.

 🎵🎸Well, shake it up baby, now!🎼🎵