Building a football collection several sets at a time

Nothing is one at a time for me.   Baseball started all over the place when I got back into collecting, then I decided on just building sets between 1968-1986.  Still working on the first 5 sets (1968-1972), but there's no hurry.

Hockey was the same way, all kinds of cards as fast as I could.  Now, even though it's the lowest focused of the 3 sports that I collect currently, still have the goal of finishing 1970-71 OPC through 1989-90.  Only have 4 of those sets finished, again there's no hurry.   

Football seems to be headed in the same direction.  I've discovered just how great the football sets are in the same era as the baseball sets.   1968-1986 seems to be the timeline that I'm going to chase.  The early sets are relatively small in size, the 73-79 sets all look good (although I'm not partial to '78, more to come down the road on that set), and the early to mid 80's are solid and fairly inexpensive.

I recently completed a trade on TCDB that netted me a few cards from a couple of late 70's FB sets.

I do like '77 Topps, a lot.  I've seen the Spanish version of some of these cards as well which I get a kick out of trying to figure out what position the guy on the card plays.  

I didn't know that each team has their own checklist card as part of the set.   I like that.  It's a shame that there's no logos on the helmets as you can see on the Garo Yepremian card, but it's small in importance for me with these sets.

I wonder if John Dutton of the Colts knew that he would be the title character's name of a very popular show over 40 years later.  That reminds me, I need to get caught up on Yellowstone some day.

Notice that the Team Leaders card in the '79 set has the team checklist on the back, which is the opposite of the '77 shown above, where the Team Leaders are on the back.  

I haven't met a card back from the '70s that I didn't like.  When I have my reading glasses on and the eyes are focused, all the backs are great.  Easy to read, some good cartoons and the '74 set has a game as well.  

Thanks to Marco on TCDB for the great trade, it is appreciated!

Robert

Flexing your muscles on the beech

It's good to be back.   Back collecting more.  Back posting more.  Back buying more.  Case in point was a recent transaction on the TCDB website that I started with a seller who had some '69s on my want list.  A bit of back and forth about the price and the cards available and I wound up with 14 more cards knocked off my '69 Topps set.

I am kind of leery about approaching folks on sites trying to buy cards.  You never know what you might end up with.  But I took a look at "musclebeech" 's feedback which is a clean 100% and saw some good reviews, so I took a shot.   Like I mentioned, things went very smoothly, I was provided with a tracking number on a Monday and my cards were here a few days later.   Perfecto.

I still have some distance to travel before this set is done, 174 cards to be exact, but it has been nice lately to start knocking off some card #'s that are in the 500's from the want list.  I didn't pick up any major stars out of this group, but you may recall some of the names if you're older or you've collected vintage sets in the past.  

I've been having some fun gathering the '69T set over the past few months.  At the beginning of 2022 it was probably the furthest thing from my mind, now I'm almost 3/4 done and looking forward to getting even closer before the end of the year.  

More trades to come, it's almost as if I haven't been away.

Robert

More from the Battersbox

To go along with the Bobby Hull post from Friday, the remainder of the cards from the Battersbox that I received will be on display in this post.

I'm only at 10% of the '68 Topps football set complete, but I'm loving the cards so far.  The Hewritt Dixon card on the bottom of the scan features him in his Broncos uniform before his trade to the Raiders. He had just finished his 2nd season in the AFL when this card was released, finishing 5th in pass receiving the year before.  On Football reference, he is listed as a full back for most of his Raiders career, a position that is almost extinct in today's game.

Jack Clancy listed as a flanker, another name that is all but gone in the modern NFL.  Jack spent the '68 season injured when he ruptured a ligament in his left knee.  His '69 season was cut short due to ligament damage in his right knee.  His final season in '70 was with the Packers only catching 16 passes

Another victim of the lack of airbrushing is Bobby Hunt, who is featured in his Kansas City Chiefs uniform.  The last 2 years of his career were spent in Cincinnati where he only picked off 5 passes after his first 6 seasons where he gained 37 picks.  

As much as I love the '68 Topps FB set, the '69 may even be better.  These are the first 2 cards I have for the set; I'm hoping that someone can remind me of another set out there that features a black back with white writing.  This set is also quite light, just 263 cards.  The colors are really nice and some cards don't even have borders on the front.  I found the Vintage football card gallery site which provides all the cards available before 1979, so if you're looking for something to look at while the TCDB site is down for maintenance, this is your ticket.  

Keeping with the '69 era, a trio of Topps baseball cards finished out the order.  I can't access the TCDB site right now, but I know I'm closing in on the 75 % mark for this set, which is a big improvement over the start of this year when I might have had a third of that amount.  I find myself poking around ebay looking for the Reggie Jackson RC (there's a well-loved copy on the site for $90 right now).  Mantle, Ryan and a couple of others will slow this set build down a little.

Late 60's through early 70's football and baseball seems to be the sweet spot for me right now; I'm sure you'll be seeing more of these in the coming few months.

Robert

Just for the Hull of it

One card post time here on the blog tonight.  I recently received my latest order from the Battersbox seller on eBay and the one card that I bought on a bit of a whim was this one:

I'm still in the $1-$2 range when purchasing cards online for the most part, but when grabbing a few baseball/football vintage commons from one of my favorite sellers, this card caught my eye.

The price?  $10.50.   The listing said this card was "G/VG" so I figured why not take a chance.  I needed it for the 71/72 OPC set I'm still working on, and I'm never going to find a copy for this cheap again, so I put it in the cart.

You can't see it in the scan, but there's a crease running from the bottom center of the card through the Black Hawks logo forehead on the lower right.  There are a couple of soft corners in the top right and bottom left, and right above the "K" is a near pin hole.  (it looks like a dot in the blue border)

My big stickler as far as condition goes is on the back.  No Paper Loss.  A lot of people used to tape or glue cards onto paper or into scrapbooks, so seeing the back almost neat as a pin made me smile.

Good enough for me.  Don't think I'll chase an upgrade anytime soon.   Just 69 cards remain in this set.

More cards to come from this purchase, but I felt this one deserved its own post.

Robert

Round 2

After taking a few months off both blogging related, and trading related, I've turned on the trades again at the TCDB website.   The site has made a few cosmetic changes, one of the nicest ones being when a trade is countered, the trade page shows the changes that were made (both additions and subtractions).  

I made a couple of small trades in the first few days, getting a total of 5 cards back in the 2 deals.   One of the trades netted me a couple of John Olerud cards for that collection...

 

Always liked the bright Pacific Revolution cards, this 1999 copy on the left shines just as bright in hand as it did in the scan.  Collectors Choice was always a nice cheap buy back in the 90's when you wanted a card fix for a buck to a buck and a half.  

On the back of the CC card was a Did you Know section which details John's college player of the year for Washington State in '88.  He hit .464 (!) and was 15-0(!!) as a pitcher for the Cougars.  WSU didn't make it out of the West 1 regional, losing in the semi-final game to Fresno State 7-6.  Stanford won the college WS in '88, beating #1 ranked Arizona State 9-4.

A trio of 2009 Allen & Ginter cards knocked my want list down to 7, as well as adding one to the Jim Thome collection.   I spent some time before finishing this portion of the post checking the '09 A&G Box to make sure I have the want list correct (I found one card I had checked as in hand missing), so here's what's left.

4,126,176,276,290,308,338

Couple of SPs, couple of athletes in Michael Phelps and Cat Osterman, couple of RC's and Jorge Posada round out the 7 cards on the list.  It'll be nice to knock this one off the list in the very near future.

Round 2 has begun.   

Robert

The I's have it

I've been in Florida since 2015 now, moved into my house in 2016.   In those years, I've been fortunate to have had to really worry about 2 hurricanes.

Irma in 2017, which caused some localized flooding and a lot of downed trees and power lines in my area, but nothing super serious that we couldn't deal with.  We cut down our coconut tree this summer as it had quite the lean to it, and we're thankful that we did.

In 2022, Ian moved a little to the left of Irma's track.  But boy what a punch.  My wife and I?  We were very lucky indeed, as we live only 90 miles from Ft. Myers Beach which was absolutely devastated.  

 

There were a couple of you out there who checked in on me while the storm was coming/going through the state, I thank you for that.  Made me feel good to know that I've made a few good friends in the card world!

The cards I'm showing off on this post I've had on the desk for about 2 weeks now (give or take a couple of days), but the absolute fatigue of helping out on the phones for my colleagues in the northern part of the state made thinking about posting a bit of a chore.  

But now that I'm up and running again, both on the home front, and in the card trading world (a couple of posts to come on that front), it's good to get some more vintage out there on the blog for the folks to see.

After several months away, I decided to get the TCDB trades going again.  I turned on trading as of September the 24th and already I have 2 completed and 5 on the go.  One of the 5 is actually a purchase which I rarely do on the site, but it is for a group of '69 Topps baseball which I'm working towards a state where I only need big name cards.  I'll be sure to show off the lot of 14 when they arrive in the next few days.

All I can say is if Idalia hits in 2023, it might be time to rethink the Florida retirement plan.

Robert