1975(?) Sugar Daddy Connie Hawkins

I found this in a box of junk cards I was going through while trying to find something else. I'd forgotten about it and until now I didn't even have it on my Hawkins checklist. Sugar Daddy candy 'pops' were pretty popular when I was a kid. I'm sure they are still around. The elongated shape of Sugar Daddys led to the small size of the card (illustrated below) and odd shape.

This little card comes from the second of four mid-70s issues from Nabisco/Sugar Daddy. The first two sets were multi-sport and had 25 guys in each.  Hawkins is included in both of the first two series but the two checklists (again, look below) had a lot of overlap but were not exactly the same. They were both laid out with football players as the first cards, followed by hockey and then hoops. oddly, there is a lone stray hockey guy in the middle of the basketball players in both. This article from SCD in 2015 has a lot more info on these.

Another quirk, which I can't explain, is that the sets are listed as being from 1974 and 1975. But the stats on this '1975' Hawkins (note the copyright) come from the '72-'73 season.

 

I've enlarged the back for readability. And I noticed there were something called Sugar Mama Pops. I don't remember them but apparently they were the chocolate-coated version. I found a label and a photo of the 'poster' that these were supposed to be displayed on.

Here's the card next to a standard Topps card:

 

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Oh, good old Sugar Daddys..

 

Here are the checklists. The later series issued after these two showed non-specific athletes from all sorts of different sports. They are as boring as they sound.

1974 Sugar Daddy Pro Faces

1 Roger Staubach              
2 Floyd Little              
3 Steve Owens              
4 Roman Gabriel              
5 Bobby Douglass              
6 John Gilliam              
7 Bob Lilly              
8 John Brockington              
9 Jim Plunkett              
10 Greg Landry              
11 Phil Esposito              
12 Dennis Hull              
13 Reg Fleming              
14 Garry Unger              
15 Derek Sanderson              
16 Jerry Korab              
17 Oscar Robertson              
18 Spencer Haywood              
19 Jo Jo White              
20 Connie Hawkins              
21 Nate Thurmond              
22 Mickey Redmond              
23 Chet Walker              
24 Calvin Murphy              
25 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

1975 Sugar Daddy

1 Roger Staubach              
2 Floyd Little              
3 Alan Page              
4 Merlin Olsen              
5 Wally Chambers              
6 John Gilliam              
7 Bob Lilly              
8 John Brockington              
9 Jim Plunkett              
10 Willie Lanier              
11 Phil Esposito              
12 Dennis Hull              
13 Brad Park              
14 Tom Lysiak              
15 Bernie Parent              
16 Mickey Redmond              
17 Jerry Sloan              
18 Spencer Haywood              
19 Bob Lanier              
20 Connie Hawkins              
21 Geoff Petrie              
22 Don Awrey              
23 Chet Walker              
24 Bob McAdoo              
25 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I don't have the other Hawkins. This '74 series (or Series No. 1 as Nabisco called it) show players in team uniforms on plain backgrounds rather that with the 'All Star' motif.

Late addition...Sugar Mama wrapper:

These apparently were like Milk Duds on a stick. I'm sure they paid for a few dentists' car notes.

The Best Thing About Card Shows....

...is enjoying them with friends, both old and new. I hit up the TriStar show here in Houston this past weekend. I thought it was one of the better shows they've had in awhile. That may be because there didn't seem to be the huge autograph lines that I've encountered in the past. Mostly I think it was the quality of the dealers in attendance.

And I mentioned friends. I met up with Bru who pens the entertaining Remember The Astrodome blog. Great guy and I enjoyed talking collections as we walked. If you check his latest blog entries you'll see he did pretty well at the show. Local collectors like him had a real bonanza of Astros 'stuff'' to drool over. Winning a title does that. I'd like to hit a Baltimore area show one day. I'd probably go broke.

I also bumped into one of oldest friends. Bobby has by far the best collection of vintage cards I've ever seen. He's considering selling off a chuck of it and it was fun to watch the dealers go bug-eyed when he showed them what he had in his case.

As for me..well this was one of those rare shows that I left without having bought a single baseball card. But I did end up with this:

I've had this 1958 All Star program on my want list for many years. I never seemed to be able to find on in decent condition with a price tag I could live with. One of the show dealers had a terrific variety of vintage publications, and what a display it was. I paid dearly for this but he also had a '93 ASG program so I made him an offer on the pair. He accepted without counter-offering which makes me think I could have gone lower but it was worth the cost.

Both programs came with ticket stubs from the games. Pretty good selling point!

I'm going to do a separate post on the '58 program so I'll save the details for that one. But there was more at the show than just programs.....

Bro surprised me with a sweet 8x10 of Milt Pappas. My collection of Orioles photos needs to see the light of day so Bru's gift (he got it in a lot of pics at an estate sale) inspired me to snag a box of binder pages for them. One of my retirement projects is to organize my photos. I love the fact that this one was taken at Yankee Stadium where I saw so many Orioles games as a kid. That's Herm Starrette in the background.

Next to the programs my biggest purchase was a stack of '70/'71 Topps basketball cards. One dealer had multiples of most every common and some SPs in wonderful condition. His prices were reasonable so I knocked about 50 cards from my wantlist.

It's a weird and wonderful set full of odd poses, reversed jerseys,dopey expressions and tons of color. I love it. I'll just post a handful here.

Jim Barnes as an Olympic gold medal winner with the US team in 1964 and led an interesting if somewhat tragic life.

He bounced around the NBA and carried with him the nickname of 'Bad News'. I love that Topps used it for his cartoon in this set.

Here's a closer look:

Nate Thurmond may be the most overlooked star in NBA history. He could flat out play. When I was coaching my sons in youth basketball one of the opposing coaches came over after a game and said "Your big boy rebounds like Nate Thurmond!" When he said that I knew the guy knew his hoops.

This is one crazy card though. 

Gus Johnson was a fun guy to watch. He played for the Bullets when I was a fan of the club and would fly down the key and rattle the rim with slams. He was like Connie Hawkins with a bit less 'flash'.

And again Topps did a great job with the cartoon.

Behold! "Gus has a gold tooth."

Topps also threw in actual un-retouched photos like this one. Like I said, a weird set!

I also came one card closer to finishing off my 1972 Icee Bear NBA set. The Hawk looking very badass.

My last purchase was a spur of the moment thing. One of the bigger private signing outfits always has a large table at TriStar shows and sometimes sells off excess merchandise at good prices. I have a rather tattered copy of the actual SI cover but I wanted this Big E signed photo-copy for the UH wall in my home office.

I like the big card shows but they are hard on my hip and back. I'm looking forward to the upcoming small hotel shows. I'm sure I won't leave the next one of those without at least one baseball card!

Hawkins RC from Jon of APSFYT.

The blogging community is just awesome, is it not?  But I didn't need to remind anyone this, did I? If you need any more evidence this post and a couple more in the next week or so will provide it. Jon, who authors the always entertaining A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts, read my post about the passing of Connie Hawkins and immediately reached out to see if I wanted his extra copy of Hawk's rookie card. I sprained my wrist diving for the keyboard to accept his offer. Here is Hawk and some friends Jon included to keep him company on the trip. BTW... Jon is running a contest on his blog. Go check it out and enter why don't you.

I love this Topps 69/70 hoops set. I'm not up on all the ins and outs of the licencing rights of that period but Topps obviously couldn't use team nicknames or logos on its products. Does that take away from the set of this card? Nope. It's a beaut. I love the little player drawings that surround the main photo and cartoons are always fun.

There are some players that are worth the price of the ticket no matter what team or sport. Hawk is one of them, James Hardin, Barry Sanders and Gale Sayers were others. I was lucky. Back when Hawkins was playing for Phoenix in the early 70s the Rockets were playing home games in Hofheinz Pavilion on the University of Houston campus. Students got in for a buck but as an employee working in the building I could just stroll down the ramp and watch games. I saw a lot of NBA action back then.

This card is a rookie card in the sense that Hawkins wasn't in the NBA previously and no mainstream sets were issued for the ABA. Hawk was the ABA's MVP in 1968 with the Pittsburgh Pipers and averaged 30 ppg for the largely forgotten Minnesota Pipers in 1968/69.

To keep the Hawk rookie from getting lonely Jon sent along some Orioles. Here are some of them.

 This Jim Palmer GQ is different from any of the (admittedly few) GQ cards I own. I've never seen the off white borders on these. Very nice addition to my JP PC.

This next one is a Ryan Minor mini card from 1999's Private Stock set. Again, I have never seen anything from this set.  BaseballCardPedia.com filled me in.

Below on the left is a 2005 Sammy Sosa Turkey Red with no name on the front. I'll let you provide your own punchline. He's paired with a Javy Lopez Donruss Portraits, also from 2005.

Upper Deck Ripken that didn't scan very well.

Buyback Joe Kerrigan from 1979. Does seem possible that he was a player nearly 40 years ago.

JJ Hardy won't be back with the Orioles next season. Here he is on a Power Players version of his Topps card from 2014. That Weaver Patch...RIP Earl.

Miggy! 2004 Fleer Ultra. This may or may not be a gold label thingy. Google calls it a Gold Medallion card so I'm going with that.

Thanks, Jon! Much appreciated addition to my Hawk, Palmer and a couple other PCs.

RIP Connie Hawkins

One of my favorite hoops guys and one of the most compelling to watch was Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins. I just read that he passed away at age 75 yesterday.

His online obits will list his accomplishments and detail his issues but let me just say that he was as much fun to watch on the court as any player I've ever seen.

I have a fairly extensive Hawk collection and pieces of it have been posted here before. I'll repost a few today. Several of these came from the always generous Mark Hoyle.

What an amazing player he was. RIP indeed.

The video below features some Hawk highlights and classic Marvin Gaye music, Inner City Blues. 

From CardStacks comes a Stacked Deck

I wish I could collect vintage Bill Russell cards. But they are so darn expensive. I have his '61 Fleer card and I blogged it and told my 'I sat next to Bill Russell' story in a post in 2012. He was such a ridiculously intense competitor. I draw a lot of parallels between Russell and another favorite of mine whose card shows up below, Frank Robinson. While neither could be classified as the 'best' in their respective sports, both are guys I'd want on my team if I had to win one game.

So, as with many 'legends' whose cards I love sorting through, I content myself with modern, more affordable versions. And Ryan of the Card Stacks blog gave my Bill Russell collection a huge boost when he sent me an envelope stuffed with these Russell cards and a few others that fit nicely into various PCs.

Some of these are Heritage designs like the one up top. The others are from various sets, most are new to me, a guy who hasn't bought any modern hoops cards. (Do they make modern hoops cards? If so, who has the licence these days?)

I have a Murad card from the original 1910 set. They would make an awesome set to chase but who has the dough?

Bowman should have used green instead of red on this one. But it's got a neat photo nonetheless.

This one, based on the 1965 baseball design, may be my favorite of the bunch. Russ putting up a shot over Willis Reed in Madison Square Garden... classic.

Russ grabs a rebound. He was always grabbing rebounds. And pissing off Wilt.

And then there is this card of my man, Connie Hawkins. Behind the back moves were a Hawkins staple. Smiling wasn't.

Ryan also included a couple of baseball cards, both Gypsy Queens and both of players I collect. Frank Robinson and Lance Berkman. Berkman goes into my Killer B's binder. 

Thanks, again Ryan. I really appreciate your generosity. I'm sure I can help you out on some of your PCs.