Still showing off the spoils of the monthly card show

The past couple of weekends have been very good in my pursuit of the '75 Topps set.  I've picked up 76 cards, leaving me with just 53 to go to complete the set.  Of the 53, some of them will hit the wallet a little.  The Hank Aaron's that bookend the set, the Rice and Carter RCs, Nolan Ryan, Pete Rose and Carl Yastrzemski cards all book for more than $10, so I'll probably end up picking up those one at a time.

It was fun last weekend at the card show to pick up a nice chunk of cards towards the set, so I figured I'd show a few of them off to you, 5-4-3-2-1 style.

Let's start with 5 of the team checklist cards:

I wonder if the White Sox didn't have a team photo available.  Kind of an interesting contrast to the other 4 cards, none of which feature the floating heads.  By my count, a couple of Sox were shortchanged, because there's only 23 floating heads n the photo.

Next, we have 4 of the 4-square Rookie Cards:

A couple of names that I remember in a lot of uniforms that I don't remember them in.  I never knew that Scott McGregor was a Yankee or Vern Ruhle was a Tiger.  I do remember Dennis Leonard having a run of success with the Royals during the late 70's and early 80's, only to have his career cut short because of recurring knee problems.


I love the year by year MVP cards, and these three are no exception:

Six pretty solid players on these 3 cards.  It's not often that pitchers earn the MVP award, but Vida Blue's 1971 season was well worth the award.  24-8, 8 shutouts, 1.82 ERA, 0.952 WHIP.  Take a look at the 1971 MVP voting, and look at the hitters who earned votes, and you'll see why Blue won the award.

Speaking of Vida Blue....

I'm sure anyone playing fantasy baseball in the mid 70's would have been happy with these two guys on their team.

Finally, one league leaders card:

Interesting to note, the AL had introduced the DH rule in 1973 to increase scoring.  Burroughs was only one of 2 AL hitters to drive in 100 + runs, while Bench was one of 9 National League batters to drive in 100 (Ron Cey just needed 3 more and he would have made it an even 10).  Maybe the DH took a little time to kick in?

Less than 10% of the set to go, can't wait to get them all in pages and enjoy the set even more.

thanks for reading, Robert