Ten

I've done pretty well with picking up cards here and there towards my '64 Topps set.  At the card show last weekend, outside of the Frank Robinson card I showed you last weekend, I was able to purchase 10 other '64s, including some decent cards of names you'll know as well.

Let's start with the 4 commons

The only name of the 4 that I knew was Chuck Hiller, and that's only because I pulled a '62 buyback card of his from Heritage two years ago.  The others?  Well I needed them...

Next up, a checklist and a short printed high number card.

It's kind of fascinating to see which numbers people actually color in when they did use the checklists for their intended purpose.  After looking at that, I saw some of the names on the front of the card that I still need to acquire.   Roberto Clemente.   Bob Gibson.  Yikes.

Cap Peterson wound up having a very short career, and unfortunately a very short life, dying at the age of 37 in 1980.  Phil Gagliano was the definition of utility player, his 12 seasons in the majors were spent appearing at a minimum of 3 positions each year, with a lot of the seasons showing him playing 4 or 5 positions.  These gents probably should not have been classified as "stars", at least in the baseball sense of the word, in my opinion.  

OK, now let's move on to the names most of you should know....

Both of these cards have some flaws, which is the reason I got them on the cheap.  Don't care though, they are both in the collection now, and are great additions to my set.  Billy Williams only faced 2 pitchers more than he faced Juan Marichal during his HOF career (Gibson, Drysdale), and his numbers vs Marichal were OK.  A .266 average in 124 career ABs with 6 HR and 20 RBI's isn't too shabby, although Marichal has the distinction of being the pitcher that struck out Williams more than any other (22 times)

Finally, we have two more star players, one with a French nickname, and another who has become an announcer that people seem to love to hate.

Rusty Staub (Le Grand Orange) still ranks 13th on the all time games played list with 2951.  Rusty was the model of consistency over his career, never having a really amazing season offensively, but his stats were very steady, finishing his career with 499 doubles and a .279 average with 2716 hits. 

Tim McCarver also had a long career, actually making his major league debut at the age of 17(!) in 1959.  Tim's 21 seasons were spent mostly in the NL (2 very brief seasons in Boston during the mid 70's  being the only break), and his one interesting statistic is that in 1966 as a catcher, he led the senior circuit in triples with 13. 

I'm currently at 48% completion of the 1964 set, and need another 70 cards to reach my goal of 60% complete by the end of the year.  If I can keep finding commons 10 at a time on the cheap, I'm sure I'll be able to accomplish that.

Thanks for reading, Robert