Dollar box diving Part 3

I had meant for this post to be up on the blog mid-week, but an illness took me out for a few days.  But now we're back up and running.  Scanned a few cards today, and I'm happy with what I was able to acquire to put a small dent into the 70-72 Topps baseball want lists.  

Apparently I had the jitters when I was loading these 9 cards onto the scanner bed, but you get the idea of what I picked up.  Nothing real big time here, but it was nice to get an AL playoff card into the collection.  Still a long way to go to finish the 1970 set, just under 300 cards to go.  

1971 Topps hasn't been on the back burner for a while, it's been right off of the stove.  So when I started seeing these cards come up for a dollar apiece, I felt a bit of sympathy for the set, and a dozen cards have been added, including a few high-numbered cards.  

Now seeing these cards with a lot of dinged corners you're probably wondering what the excitement was to purchase them.   I know that this is a set that's going to take a very long time to finish and worrying about perfect condition for high-numbered cards at a cost of $1 was going to be silly.  Get them in, get the total number of cards to 299 out of the monster 752 card set, and move on.  

I've been jealous for a while; having seen a few people on Twitter complete this beauty of a set has me wanting to move on this 1972 Topps set for a few weeks.  Then I look at where I am (67% complete) and become aware of the fact that we're still a LONG way off.  Still, 7 cards off the list, 6 of them in the 600-699 # range still has me feeling a bit better about where I am.  

Still lots of sets I'm working on, I've also been on a bit of an A&G run lately to try and finish the 2006-2021 run.   

That is at least something that's achievable for me.

Robert

Dollar box diving Part 2

Not all, but most of these cards that I'll show today are part of sets that I'd like to put together someday.  But there are those that just came to the house because, well, they were football cards, and the players on them just looked like football players, or they had names that were unique.

Take this pair for example:

On the left.  1962 Topps Art Hunter.  He just LOOKS like a football player.  

On the right.  1972 Topps Rockne Freitas.  Another fellow that belongs on a football players catalog.  

In the middle.   Billy Martin.  Looks like a football player.  Name sounds like a baseball player/manager.

On the left.  This one has me very curious.   A.D. Whitfield.   Have no idea what the initials A.D. stand for.  His player page on Football Reference shows him as A.D.

On the right.  Bobby Joe Conrad.  Yep, he looks like a football player.

Single cards from the '75 set (Myers) and the '70 set (Nelsen).  I Love both of these sets, especially the '70 Topps set which has the orange backs.  Something odd about my love for this and the '64 Topps baseball set which has orange backs as well.  

1971 Topps football is another great set.  Even better is that I recognize a couple of the names here, especially Willie Lanier who was an 8-time pro-bowler and a 4-time all pro, along with winning a Super Bowl in 1970.

With each card that comes in for the 1969 Topps set, the more I love it.  It's down the road on the want to finish list, but when I get around to concentrating on it, I'll find more to enjoy and write about as I go.  It's a small set, just 263 cards (these 4 bring me to 10); I'm very curious to see if there's a pattern to the background color on the cards.  

I've saved the baseball for last, a few 71's and 72's to show.  At a buck apiece, I wasn't complaining about these cards coming home for sure.

Robert

Dollar box diving: Part 1

One of my favorite sellers on eBay has been featuring a nice quantity of vintage cards in his store at a buck apiece.  I dove in a couple of times during the month of January and found a nice mix of 60's and 70's cards in a trio of sports (wasn't feeling frisky about the basketball portion).  I showed off just one card so far in the Air Coryell post a week or so ago, but now I've got the time, along with a bit of organization, to show off the rest.

First up will be the hockey portion, which totals just 13 cards over 3 different sets from the early 70's, all of which have a long way to go in the set building category.

The lone add from the 72-73 set features Gary Edwards of the Kings.  I've had him confused with another goalie from that era, Gary Smith of the Chicago Black Hawks.  Maybe it's because Mr. Edwards bounced from team to team similar to what Mr. Smith did.  

Edwards' most productive time came with the Kings, where he played 6 seasons with the club.  Gary shared the duties in between the pipes with Kings legend Rogie Vachon, playing 44 games and winning 13.  That club also had the rookie season of Billy Smith from the Islanders dynasty of the late 70's early 80's fame.

The first scan got cut off a bit, but I wound up with 5 cards from the 73-74 set which I have barely touched during my collecting time.  

This is one of the more colorful sets of the 70's, which makes me wonder why I haven't added more to my collection than the paltry 13 cards that I own.  

For the longest time (we're talking years), the only card I had from the 70-71 OPC set I had was Joe Szura of the California Golden Seals.  

Was I ever surprised to see these cards in the dollar "box" on eBay, so I snapped up a few to add to the group.  Names that I recognize as well, such as Pit Martin, Ted Irvine (Chris Jericho's dad if you're into wrestling), and Joe Watson.  I now own 15 cards from the set, which is the same size as the 73-74 set, just 264 cards.  

More to come, next up will be the football portion, including a few from the '69 Topps set that I have really taken a liking to.

Robert

That's 200

Everyone likes when they hit a collecting milestone (at least I think they do).  A certain number of posts or a blog anniversary or even something as simple as reaching a certain number of cards towards a set.  Doesn't hurt when it's a vintage set that everyone loves seeing on the blogosphere.  

On the weekend I received a couple of eBay purchases, one of them bringing the total cards in my 71-72 OPC hockey build to an even 200!  

For a couple of years I've been picking away at the set, a couple of cards here, a few cards there.  I know that this set will be the marathon of marathons since there are a trio of rookie cards that are going to break the bank.  I've readied myself to get special permission to buy those cards.

But for now, 5 cards that fit into the weekly budget will do just fine, even if George Gardner in the center of a trio of Canucks has a nicely dinged corner, but that's OK for this collector because my main goal for this set is no paper loss on the backs.  I've seen many cards over time from this set that were previously taped into binders or onto other cardboard posters, only to be removed and have paper from the back torn away.  Which is such a shame because the backs of these cards are wonderful.  

200 out of 264 cards in the binder.  A few more commons and minor stars to grab then it's off to get a lot of big names. 

Ouch

Robert

Trades can bring you some nice surprises

It felt like it was too good to be true.  I looked at a trade recently and thought to myself, "there's just no way I'm getting these cards".  I waited a couple of days, looked at the trade again and looked at the feedback.  100%.  I was sending 5 cards for 4, not a bad trade on my part.  I hit the button, and some great cards headed my way in the mail.   They arrived last night and brought a smile to my face.   

I've collected Fleer Ultra cards over the years, but I can't recall ever seeing a Follow the Leader insert come from any of those sets.  Especially one featuring Jim Thome.  The design is simple, and the card has a short bio on the back recounting the 2003 Phillies falling short of the playoffs despite Jim's 10HR/30 RBI September.  

The next three cards were thought to have to be purchased to add them to my 84-85 OPC set.  Wrong.

The Chris Chelios rookie card has come down slightly in price over the past few years, but still is a quality addition to any collection.  Still need the Neely and Yzerman rookie cards, but having this one in hand is a great feeling.

A pair of Gretzky cards round out the trade, bringing the want list for the 84-85 OPC set down to just 24 cards.  6 of them are RC's, 6 of them are Gretzky cards (!) and 5 others are Edmonton Oilers (no commons in the bunch).  

To finish the set is going to cost probably $100 or so (Steve Yzerman rookies aren't cheap), and this parallels with 2 football sets that I'm down to a dozen or so cards remaining.  My 81 Topps set needs the Joe Montana rookie, and the 82 Topps still needs Lawrence Taylor and Ronnie Lott rookie cards.  

I'm wandering a little off topic here.  Even though most of my trades have featured a few cards here and there with nothing major going through the mail, sometimes you get a nice surprise like this one and remember that there are a lot of great people out there in the card community.  

Robert

Better Call Saul

I recently completed a trade for a few football cards from the '79 Topps set, giving up a few '82 Topps doubles in return.  I've been able to nickel and dime my way toward the 300-card plateau on the '79 set.

What's great for me is being able to recognize a few names that came in the trade, most notably wide receiver Drew Pearson of the Cowboys.  It seems like the Cowboys were on TV almost every Sunday afternoon when I was growing up, so you got to know the names of the players seeing them all the time.

I had a laugh at myself as well, seeing the card of Neil O'Donoghue and thinking " I didn't know he started in the NFL as a kicker?"  Then a few minutes later I realized that I was confusing him with Neil O'Donnell, the QB who played for the Steelers and a few other teams in the 90's.  Not only was I off by position, I also missed by a decade as well.

Love the linemen cards, the bios on the back without any stats listed to me is a great look.  I'll let you read them, you don't need me to rehash what you can already see.

Even though Art Shell was the more notable player on this group of 8 cards that came my way, Better Call Shell just sounds like an advertisement for an oil company.  

Better Call Saul is a little more known to people who follow the Breaking Bad franchise anyway....

Robert

Air Coryell

A one card post featuring the field general of the Air Coryell system, Dan Fouts of the then San Diego Chargers.

This of course is his 1978 Topps Card, bought for a dollar a couple months ago at the Port St. Lucie card show.  I don't quite remember the blue jerseys with the white stripe through the shoulder, but the blue helmets with the lightning bolt on both sides are unforgettable.

1978 was a year or two before the offense began to explode; Dan began to torch defenses to the tune of 3 straight 4000-yard seasons, and the 4th would have happened had he played a full season in 1982 (player strike).  

Those offenses were LOADED with talent.  Chuck Muncie at RB.  Kellen Winslow at TE.  John Jefferson and Charlier Joiner were the wideouts.  Wes Chandler came along in 1981.

These teams were just a step away from the Super Bowl in 80 & 81, losing the conference championship games to the Raiders and the Bengals.  His single season mark of 4802 passing yards in 1981 held the NFL record, surpassed 3 seasons later by Dan Marino.  

Marino and Fouts held the top two places until the 21st century came along; now that 4802-yard season is 33rd all time.  Have some fun and look at the all time passing yard leaders here 

The 1978 set has barely started for me, just 26 cards out of the 528-card set have arrived here at the house.  I'm hoping to find a nice starter set somewhere for a reasonable price to get started.   

Robert 

JT and EB

Once in a while, I'll look at the history links on my TCDB pages to see how my collection has progressed over time.  I recently received a trade (yes, the trades have started up again) and saw a trio of cards which made me think:

"Gee I haven't seen any of these in quite a while."

Case in point, a pair of Jim Thome base cards that have been added to the collection, bringing the total to 655.

The beginning of Jim's second tour of duty in the AL with the White Sox, along with the end of a decade plus that he spent in Cleveland are featured on this pair.  

I kept on looking at the 2002 Upper Deck card on the right and wondered if I'd seen this before.  I opened the Thome binder, which apparently I haven't done in a while and discovered that I don't have the card.  The history link on the TCDB page told me that there's been no additions to the Thome collection since February 2022!  

The same drought applies to the 2006 A&G set:

Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks became the most recent addition to the '06 set build, almost a year since I received the last card toward the set.   March 2022 was the last time I added cards to the set, which is acting like a vintage build as I only have 130 cards out of the 350.  Maybe people are hoarding them?

Both want lists are up to date on my TCDB account (ID:rmitchell6700) and trades are welcome.  

Robert

Clean up your mess and you can go fishing

On the weekend I had some time on my hands.  I decided to do something I haven't done in several months, update the want lists on the blog.  They certainly needed the work.  One of the pages that I noticed needing the most work was the Allen & Ginter page.

I'd pulled in a lot of cards from trades over the past few months, and I noticed that there was a couple of sets that were getting pretty low.  One in particular was the 2012 set, which I realized had only one card on it.  For a long time, I was being cheap about spending the money for it, and I decided it was time to go fishing for some Trout.

I thought $14 was a reasonable price for Mike Trout's first A&G card, so I grabbed it.  I immediately updated the want list to show that it was done, even though the card wasn't in hand.  It showed up today and I'm very happy to take another box off the bookshelf and add it to the stack of other completed sets on the A&G run.

I searched the same seller to see if he had any other cards worth purchasing and I only found 1.

Already had the matching base card for '21 Heritage, so the In Action card becomes the 29th VGJ card in the mini collection.  Not bad for just over a buck.  If you have any base cards of his that you're looking to trade, let me know.  I'm sure that I need a little over 9,000 of them.

Robert