1970 Topps..putting a bow on it

The Seattle Pilots team card, #713 in the set of 720, arrived yesterday and I slipped it into the last nine pocket page of my 1970 Topps binder. that was the last open slot and ends another fun vintage card chase. I had a few setbacks along the way including having a large group of OPCs included in my starter lot and an eBay dispute over my first copy of the Pilots card that I am still involved in.

But those are minor details. I'm happy to put this baby to bed. I currently have no plans to blog it card-by-card, I have way too many irons in the fire as it is. But that may change somewhere down the line.

In the meantime I have a couple of posts in the works regarding the set. I thought I'd post the first and last binder pages today. Each has some interesting cards. Here is the page containing numbers 1 thru 9:

The most expensive card on that page is #1, the Mets team card witch (painfully for me) proclaims them as "World Champions". And so they were. I've long since gotten over it but at the time it was pretty traumatic. I can still remember watching Cleon Jones catching the final out as I sat in my best friends livingroom. I got up and left without saying anything and walked home. I came to discover that there is a 'Mets tax' on their 1970 cards. I've gotten used to paying a premium for Yankees players but doing so for the 1970 Topps Mets kind of sucked.

My fave on the page is #2, Diego Segui aka 'The Ancient Mariner'. He earned that nickname when he made his second go-round in a Seattle uniform as the Opening Day pitcher for the Seattle Mariners in 1977. He was 39 at the time. The '69 Pilots uniforms are among my all time favorites and I'll write a post showing them off before long.

The Grant Jackson card is a close second. Jackson was coming off his only All Star season and in 1970 he joined the Orioles. He was a handy bullpen piece for the O's until he was dealt to the Yanks in 1976. I have an Orioles game program and a couple of team postcards signed by him.

Now we will skip to the last binder page, cards #712 thru #720:

Most expensive card...easily the Nolan Ryan. It was the costliest card of all 720 by far. I set a budget and every card that fell within my limit had some flaws. I decided that I'd ignore the off-centeredness of this one in favor of the nice corners. This is Ryan's third Topps card, his second solo card. But the premium comes from it being a high number.

I found that there was absolutely no rhyme or reason to the pricing of the 1970 high numbers. I picked up some excellent copies of common players in the high number series for about $1.75 while others commanded $7 to $10 consistently. It made the chase just that much more fun.

My favorite on this page is the Pilots team card. It was costly in it's own right and I was lucky to find this one for under $20 shipped. It's kind of interesting the Topps never switched to calling the club the Milwaukee Brewers even though the sale and city switch had gone through before the late series cards were done. This is the only Pilots team card ever released obviously.

And this one is the second copy I purchased. The first was part of a buy I made of four high numbers, three of which arrived. The fate of the fourth card, the Pilots card, is a mystery. I'll let eBay and PayPal do their thing and whatever happens happens. If I lose my case it won't be the first time I threw $25 down the drain by dealing with a questionable seller.

Looking at the back of  the card it's fun to note that these records could be labels as 'Pilots Team All Time Records'. I love the fact that ex-Orioles Big Gene Brabender will always be the Pilots leader in seven pitching categories. That's him towering over everyone else in the top row of the team card picture.

As I mentioned I'll have some other 1970 Topps posts coming. I intend to look at the Pilots' uniforms and the great managers cards in the set.

I had doubts as to whether chasing this set would be enjoyable. Turns out it surely was.

Joe Knows

Got a neat package in the mail late last week for Joe Shlabotnik. He knocked off five of the remaining dozen or so 1970 Topps cards I needed. I threw them into one picture because I didn't intend for this blog to become a 'set blog' and that's kind of the way it was headed lately. 

Anyway, here are the 1970s. These are all from the semi-high number series which have proved to be just as difficult to track down in terms of reasonable price/condition as the high numbers. Included are an Expo and a Pilot player, two reasons I love this set. Plus a former Strat-O-Matic staple from my dorm days, Ted Uhlaender. 

Joe included a bunch of other stuff in the package. These next two cards are the most fun....

This card comes from the 1975 Topps (English) Football set. The design is familiar to everyone reading this. Just like the Topps baseball set of the same year it's about as colorful (colourful?) as a set can get. It would be fun to see this thing in binder pages. For an idea of what it would look like click to this hobby site. I don't have the time or inclination at the moment but this would be a fun set to chase. If you have even the slightest interest in soccer cards you should poke around this site. It's got tons of info and pics.

I don't remember Jim Holton but he also played in the old MSL or whatever it was they called the prior US pro soccer league. His time with Man United came when the club was struggling and they even suffered (gasp) relegation! Soccer fans, particularly English ones, love to sing/chant during games and apparently this was a thing in Holton's day:

'Six foot two, eyes of blue, Big Jim Holton's after you'

Interesting to note that the stat area on the reverse instructs you to 'fill in season's record' for 1974/75. Here is a closer look.

Hyun-Soo Kim is no longer an Oriole as he was dealt at the trade deadline as part of the Orioles 'pennant push' (try not to laugh at that). I scanned this one in the card sleeve so you could see that Kim is announcing to me that he's a variation! Good thing he told me, too because my card-ignorant ass would never have known. 

Joe hit me with more Orioles, too. Some suffered from my scanner's aversion to bright white borders but these were fine:

Shiny Bowman sluggers. I only realized in the last year that Bowman isn't all rookies/minor league prospects.

Brooksie Panini Diamond King. Sweet card. I sure wish they had a license.

University of Houston alum Michael Bourn. His Oriole career ended before it started with a hand injury. I had him a few years back in fantasy so this one will bump the old one. Orioles card--->any other card.

Added value bonus! A pic I found of Jim Holton from the 80s on getty. Him, his wife and kid are wearing the caps he was awarded for his International competition appearances with Scotland. Groovy, yes?

Thanks for the cards, Joe. And I'll have another Shlabotnik-centric post this week.

Waiting for Maury

As a young collector in the early 60s it would have been nice to have had access to the internet, had there been an internet. It would have saved my friends and I a helluva lot of time trying to figure out why we never could find a Topps card of Maury Wills.

There was a Post cereal card of him. And he appeared (unofficially) on a card in the World Series subset in the 1960 Topps set. But other than that he was a ghost. Of course most everyone now knows the story of how he was snubbed by Topps until around 1958 when he was finally offered the standard $5 contract to appear in Topps products.

By then he was signed to appear only on Fleer products and what is considered his 'rookie' card is part of the wonderful 1963 Fleer set. There are several blog posts around that go into much more detail on the 'missing Maurys' but I'll direct you to the late Bob Lemke's entry. There he details the story and shows off a couple of his customs. I was happy to have added his '59 to my binder holding that set.

Enough about Wills cards we never got...I'm here to show off one I do have thanks for fellow blogger and Twitter friend Shane Katz. This super sharp example came along with a Bob Bolin card yesterday and brought me a couple of steps closer to finishing my 1970 set.

Look at the back of that card. That's a huge wall of stats and it chronicles Wills' long slow climb through the Dodgers' organization, an exceptional career in the majors to that point and his return to the Dodgers in 1969.

Interestingly the stat that put food on the Wills' family table isn't included... stolen bases. He led the NL each season from 1960 thru 1965 and then closed out the decade finishing 3rd, 2nd, 2nd and 4th. I don't think it's a stretch to say that he and Luis Aparicio changed the game in the 60s.

I'd forgotten that Wills was an expansion draft pick by the Expos prior to 1969. He was gone from the club in mid-June, traded back to Los Angeles, so I missed out on seeing him play in Parc jarry when I was there that August. I did see him play for both the Dodgers and Pirates. He also managed 83 games in Seattle over the the course of the '80 and '81 seasons. He had less than stellar results and his style never messed with the modern player.

Thanks again Shane...and look for the Bolin to appear in another post very soon.

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.

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.

1970 Topps: Bat Rack Boys

I've been busy lately knocking off my 1970 Topps needs list...with the help of some very generous bloggers, friends and Twitter pals. Those of you that have contributed...I'm very grateful. As I type this I am 37 cards shy of completing the 720 card checklist. More than half of those are high numbers but I've been lucky in finding nice copies at good prices. The only costly card of those 37 is Johnny Bench.

So far it's been a fun ride. I've grown to appreciate this set quite a bit. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea (Cardboard Connection is pretty brutal in it's description) but that's fine. 1970 was a significant year for me as the Orioles won the Series and I headed to Houston for college. Baseball was a big part of my life. I was in my nerdy Strat-O-Matic playing days. There are very few players in this set that I don't remember.

I have no plans to do a card-by-card blog for this set. God knows I'm very far behind in posting on my '58 and '60 blogs. But I do want to do some updates and a few 'theme' posts as this effort winds down. This is the first. Players posing at the bat rack is a favorite card photo scenario of mine. It goes back to the wonderful 1961 Wes Covington card.

There may be a few more similar poses in the '70 set. One or two probably got by me as I quickly flipped thru the binder but these are enough for one post.

Up top Tony Taylor squints at the camera. He was nearing the end of a long run as a starter for the Cubs and Phillies. He'd move to the Tigers before ending his career back in Philadelphia in 1976. He played in the majors for 19 years.

Jay Johnstone casts his gaze towards home plate in what I believe to be Yankee Stadium's visitors' dugout. Another three of these cards have a similar background. You'd never know by looking at this card that he was known as one of the sport's great pranksters.

OK, Del Unser isn't actually at the bat rack. He's holding a few bats at what appears to be a shopping cart or wire basket. Unser finished second to Yankee pitcher Stan Bahnsen in the AL ROY voting in 1968.

In an interesting side note the NL ROY award went to Johnny Bench in a narrow one vote win over Jerry Koosman. Bench outpolled the pitcher 10.5 to 9.5. That surprised me until I looked at the two players' numbers. Bench showed promise with his .275 average and 15 homers but Koosman won 19 games and had a 2.08 ERA and 1.10 WHIP for the not-so-Amazi' Mets who finished 9th in the NL.

Here is the universally loved Coco Laboy rookie card. Again the bats are in a basket. I'm sure this was a spring training thing. The rookie trophy, Laboy's pose and the colorful Expos uni all combine to make this a great piece of cardboard.

Like Del Unser Laboy was a ROY runner-up. He trailed Ted Sizemore in the NL vote in 1969. 1970 was his last season to appear in over 100 games.

Juan Rios' pose is not unlike that of Wes Covington as he leans over and smiles (sort of). His only big league action came in 1969. By the time this card was issued he was back in the minors where he played in four different organizations before he retired in 1974.

Harmon Killebrew is by far the best player in the bunch and I'd venture a guess that he could use any bat in that rack successfully. In Killebrew's 22 year career he was named an American League All-Star 13 times, the 1969 American League Most Valuable Player and a six-time American League home run leader. At the time of his retirement, he hit more home runs (573) than any right-handed hitter.

Gerry Moses made the AL All Star team in 1970. He was the third catcher and didn't see any action but he did get to witness teammate Carl Yastrzemski bang out 4 hits in 6 trips to the plate. That was his only AS game and 1970 was the only year he had more than 200 at bats.

And finally here is Bob Oliver sporting the old school 'windbreaker under my jersey' look in what feels like a spring training photo. He played eight big league seasons, mostly for the Royals and Angels. 1970 was his best year as he hit 27 homers and barely missed a 100 RBI season. He is the dad of longtime major league pitcher Darren Oliver. 

I'll be posting some other cards from this set over the next few months. My goal is to track down my remaining needs by the end of the year.

That ain't me!!

I recently received an interesting group of cards from one of my favorite bloggers, "Joe Shlabotnik" who writes the always entertaining The Shlabotnik Report. (Props to me for spelling it right twice before I checked it!!)

I got a big kick out of the 1978 buyback Rob Andrews. I've always felt a 'kinship' with the guy. Not only do we share a name but we were born just six days apart in 1952. As a bonus he was originally drafted by the Orioles.

Andrews had some very good minor league numbers in the O's chain but with a 25-year-old Bobby Grich (already a three time All Star and MVP candidate) holding down 2nd base the Orioles they didn't see a reason to hold on to him. So Andrews was dealt to Houston where I got to see him play before moving on to the Giants.

He's got about five Topps cards plus a few odds and ends. I have one besides this '78. And it looks like I used nearly the same post title for that one. Might be fun to try and track down a buyback of each Topps card he has.

Next up is a really, really nice 2002 Topps Gallery Frank Robinson card. I know nothing about this set but that sure is a nice piece of artwork.

Checking the back Topps gives a shout out to the artist which is nice.

The blurb is hard to read so I blew it up. Ron Stark does some very impressive work. You can check out his website for more.

This next card is of Orioles shortstop prospect Mychal Givens. It's interesting for a couple of reasons:

First of all Mychal Givens, a second round 2009 pick, is an Orioles late inning reliever now. He transitioned from infielder to the mound between the 2012 and 2013 seasons.

More interesting is what Bowman/Topps put in this signature space. I'm not sure what to make of it:

It isn't Givens signature which you can see numerous times (as well as read more of Givens' backstory) over on the Great Orioles' Autograph Project blog. It's like someone wrote out his name as a placeholder and they just went with it. <shrug>

Joe also filled a few holes on my 1970 want list. Capless guys, airbrushed guys, nicely posed guys...and Ray Oyler.

Only the Ron Clark (top middle) was a dupe but even at that it was a plus...I was checking the two copies and examined the back:

It revealed the fact that the utility infielder was formerly both a Golden Gloves champ and a rodeo rider. Pretty cool.

And finally a couple of Orioles, one new, one old...and a famous Oriole in a weird uni. I'll never acknowledge Eddie Murray as a Met. But I will stick this card in my Murray pages.

So there you have one of the more notable and offbeat PWEs I've received. Many thanks to 'Joe' for the 'fun-to-investigate' cards!

New Card Show Record

Yesterday was June edition the monthly hotel card show that I try not to miss. Attending the TriStar show last Saturday took a bit of the edge off. I'd wiped out my friend Darrell's cheap 1970 stash at that show so my main reason for heading across town yesterday was just to hang out and talk cards.

I got a late start because of the terrible morning weather and seriously considered not going at all. But I ended up making the 40 minute drive in the rain. I walking in with two things in mind. Getting lucky and finding some cheap 1970s (a long shot given the usual crop of part-time dealers that set up there) and finding some of the four current players cards I need for my fantasy binder.

A trip around the tables showed me that my 1970 quest would be as futile as I figured it would be. Darrell has spoiled me with his cheap but very presentable vintage. The stuff he sells me for a buck or two (and sometimes less) goes for $5 or more at these other tables.

So I went back to a table where the guy had jumbo boxes of current cards for ten cents a card. Mostly they contained those glossy chrome-ish parallels, semi-stars, anonymous Bowman rookies and Topps base set inserts from about 2012 on. I spent about three quarters of an hour shuffling through this mess and found three players I needed before my back gave out.

Now I had a decision to make. Am I going to just pull three dimes out and pay the guy thirty cents after spending most of an hour there? Or do I keep digging? Well I kind of did neither. I reached waaay back to the end of a row of baseball cards I hadn't gotten to yet and pulled out a huge handful. I went through them as fast as I could and dropped four almost random cards onto the tiny stack of the three I needed. then I did the same with his football cards. If a card made me hesitate for even a micro second I stacked it. In a minute or so I was done.

I somehow felt less guilty paying the guy for ten cards than I would have for three. Dumb, I know.

The Frank Robinson Archives card at the top is one of them. I'm sure it's a dupe but I didn't care. Anyway here are the other six:

I thought the signed Raul Allegre would bump whatever card I had of him in my football fantasy team collection. Sadly I realized tonite that I never had the guy on my team! I met Ray Childress in am elevator after his playing days. He was a lot smaller than I would have thought a defensive lineman would be. The Fernando is one of my favorite Stadium Club cards. I'll take a dime dupe of it any say.

So, to make a long story longer...I spent a whole dollar at the show. Never in my collecting life have I go to a show and only spent a dollar. Sixty mile round trip in the rain and I spent a buck. Sigh.

On the way home I realized my car phone charger had crapped out so I stopped at Target. While there I found two Matchbox Mustangs. 99 cents each. This pushes my collection to an even 10.

And when I got home I had a box waiting. It contained my displayed piece of the basketball court that the University of Houston's has removed as part of the renovation of the basketball arena (RIP Hofheinz Arena).

Back in the programs glory days when I worked there the arena had a Tartan flooring system in place. I'd love to have a piece of that but it's long gone.

All in all it was an interesting day. Hopefully by the July hotel show Darrell will have replenished his vintage stock!

The Good Fight

I spend the last week or so in a race against a failing CPU as I scrambled to salvage everything from my desktop before it headed to the Computer Graveyard.

It was slow going and I'm lucky that I've been pretty good about backing up my stuff. There was only a couple weeks worth of scans, pictures and documents that needed to be saved. But when you have to reboot every twenty minutes it seems like a lot more than that.

Then it was a trip to Micro Center for a new machine and the real work began....getting this thing set up like I want it and wrestling my printer/scanner into submission. This will be my first post typed up on my new computer.

During the height of the shit storm that was changing machines I received a couple of packages in the mail. Both were similar in that they contained cards for my 1970 set build plus shiny Orioles. First we'll take a look at the one from Brian at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary.

That 1970 Willie Stargell at the top had the (dubious) honor of being the first card scanned with my new set up. No card in history has probably endured more verbal abuse that that one. But it's a great card, right? I saw Stargell hit a simply ridiculous homer in the Astrodome in this 1972 game. It banged off the scoreboard in centerfield and sent the game into extras. The Pirates won in 17 innings.

I had a well worn Joe Morgan so this one from Brian is a welcome upgrade. I wish the 'Stros would go back to those 'shooting star' unis. They wore them as throwbacks a time or two a few seasons back. They are sharp.

A couple more '70s from Brian:

Bernie Allen and Cookie Rojas. Rojas' card isn't miscut like my scan makes it appear.

Rick Reichardt is #720 in the set, the end of the checklist. I only wish it was the end of my needs list! The smaller, cramped font Topps used for his position makes this card look odd.

Cisco Carlos always reminds me of my Strat-O-Matic playing days. He pitched for the White Sox and Senators which were always in my 6 team solo leagues.

Shiny Birds! Cal and Manny whose card is retina scorching for sure.

I wonder how many Bowman cards Topps produces every year. I have received a ton of these and no two are of the same player. The Donruss Cal Jr throws back to his rookie card design.

Thanks so much Brian!

The second package came from Fuji who is a fellow teacher and like me is enjoying a bit of a break from the grind.

Fuji's cards dovetail quite nicely with Brian's....70s Topps and some recent Birds. First up is a nice high number Jim Lonborg.

I had to look twice at the front of Lonborg's uniform shirt. I had forgotten about the red trimmed lettering the Bosox wore back then. Dressed To The Nines tells us that they wore these roadies from 1969 until 1972. 1973 marked the beginning of the doubleknit era and a new look for the Sox' jerseys.

Another 1970 is Padres manager Preston Gomez. He is most remembered for twice sending up a pinch hitter for pitchers who were hurling no-hitters. I hadn't remembered his partial season as Cubs manager in 1980.

The more I see of Dylan Bundy the more I think he looks like a young Tony Dow.

'Chromafied' Hyun-Soo Kim grabs a slot in the fantasy baseball binder.

Man this Adam Jones card is ..... bright! And that's clearly Camden Yards reflected on his batting helmet. You think Topps could call 'exclusive' on showing stadiums, too? I mean if you have to Photoshop out a team's colors is showing their stadium crossing the legal line as well?

Here's a Fleer Mickey Tettleton from 1990. That was about the last year I collected cards until a few years ago. It wasn't too long after this card was issued that baseball and I agreed to a trial separation.

I looked Tettleton up on Baseball Reference. I was shocked to find he was only an Oriole for three seasons. I'd have sworn it was double that.

Thanks so much Fuji. You and Brian are both among the truly good guys in this hobby. I appreciate your taking the time to send these my way and especially for chipping away at my 1970 set needs.

Final disclaimer: In the mess of the last week it's entirely possible that some of these cards got 'crossways' and I am crediting Brian for a card Fuji sent or vice versa. My usually foolproof system was pushed to the limit and beyond.