Another '59, and is the Niekro an accidental upgrade?

Took a couple of evenings away from the blog, was getting a bit tough writing after 10PM each night.  I have had a couple of cards I wanted to show for a few days and here's my chance.

Both of the cards on this post are from the same eBay seller.  I grabbed the Francona for $4, not bad really and the card is in nice condition.  The other card I'm going to show was a card that I thought I didn't have originally and finding it for $1.50 was stupendous.

A 1971 Topps Phil Niekro that I was stoked to find in nice shape for so cheap was fantastic.  Then I took a look at the original one I have in the collection...

Outside of the coloring on the left hand side of the card, I believe the photo on this card has more of a skin tone than the first picture, so now I'm not so sure.  I'll think on it a bit before I decide, unless someone gives me a compelling argument on either card in the comments.  

33 cards left for the '59 set.  We're getting there.

Robert

 

coming through as promised

Posting cards from the 1970 Topps set that I've acquired recently got blog reader, and fellow TCDB member Mark Z. to reach out and offer some less than mint cards for the set build.

My main thing so far with the vintage football cards that come by?  No writing.   No paper loss.

These 4 cards fit the bill.

You can easily see the crimp on the lower left hand corner of the Gene Washington card, and on the top right of the Dave Wilcox card, it looks like it was folded over a little, kind of like what happens after a time when you use a trading card for a book mark. 

Even with the poorly attempted scan here, the Tom Beier is easily the best of the 4 cards.  There actually is a top border on the card, and if I had to rate the condition, it would probably go EX-MT.  Now Gale Gillingham is another story.  When I showed the cards to the Mrs. this morning, she thought the exact same thing that I did, it looks like it was bit by a dog.  In a couple of places!!

So for extra writing credit, I was curious about the Tom Beier card because he's wearing a Dolphins uniform and is listed on the 49ers, so off to Football Reference we go.

Tom only played 2 seasons in the NFL, 1967 & 1969, with the Dolphins.  He was taken in the 10th round of the draft, and in his 2 NFL seasons he had 2 INT's and 2 fumble recoveries as a safety/defensive back.  It took a little bit of digging to find out that Tom was traded to the 49ers on April 30th, 1970 only to be released by them that year and not to play again.

These 4 bring the set build to 47%, almost half way now!  Thank you very much Mark for the cards, they are appreciated!!

Robert

Starting from scratch

Most of the focus lately on the blog has been vintage.  Vintage football here, vintage baseball there, and maybe an old hockey card or two shows up once in a while.

Most of the newer stuff has been pushed to the side for the most part, until I decided to start grabbing a few Allen & Ginter cards to try and finish off the 2013 set.  

Then, I thought to myself "I haven't even looked at the 2022 A&G set at all".  So I looked around on eBay a bit, and decided it was time to get the set started.  But I've been putting a lot of money down on Sportlots, COMC, and some other vintage eBay purchases.   Need to cut back on card expenditures a little.

So I decided not to buy any packs, no single card purchases of any kind for this set.  I'm going to do it the hard way. 

Start from scratch.  See if I can trade for the whole thing.  350 cards to go.  I also liked one of the insert sets I came upon and decided I'll go after that 50 card set...

I really like the look of these, and no doubt it's full of star names so none of the cards should be hard to find.  I traded for these from fellow TCDB user Charles for some 2016 A&G inserts, 5 for 5.  

The last insert I went after was the Baseball Equipment for the Ages from the 2018 set, and I still have it near by and I do look at it from time to time.  

I'm also going to try and keep posting as I get these inbound.  You know, try and keep this little run of posting I've been on going.  

0 for 350 on the base, 5 for 50 on the inserts.   Stick around, hopefully we can have some fun with this.

Robert

The Baker

I couldn't find a card of a Butcher (although Garth Butcher comes to mind) and a candlestick maker (Chandler is the proper term, anyone have any cards of Matthew Perry?), but I did get a card from a TCDB trade recently from Ed Sekula (been a long time since trades) that features a Baker...

This was a rare one for one trade.  Normally most people don't partake in something so small but a couple of $2-3 cards went each way, so I thought it was a well thought out trade.  

Good luck Baker in Tampa Bay this year.  You're only following a legend in the Big Sombrero. 

636 transactions completed now.  With the run I'm on, should hit 650 very soon.

Robert

The first part of the madness

Over the past couple of weeks, including last weeks manic run, I hit up a dozen trades on the TCDB site.  Don't know why, but apparently when I'm in the mood to trade, it just comes flowing out.  I actually mailed out 6 trades in one day; I had to carry them all on a walk to the post office in a Barnes and Noble book bag (there were 2 bubble mailers).  

I made a trade with Richard, 5 for 5.  It came from Canada in less than 2 weeks, which has been the norm lately.  

Another John Olerud card starts the trade off:

Don't know if I've ever seen or picked up an Oh Henry release from 1995, but this card was very light and the picture looks as if it was added to the card after production.  If you look at the card at a different angle. it almost looks as if it is photoshopped.  Card #335 for the Olerud collection is in hand, just 28 more and I'll have the same total as his 1993 batting average....

A pair of 2014 A&G needs knocked off the list.  More Blue Jays no less!  Both of them are now part of the Blue Jays Level of Excellence after Bautista was added to the group last weekend.  Coming along slowly, this set still isn't 60% done.  Not getting a whole lot of trade offers with cards from the set as part of them.

Two more to finish it off, Andrew McCutchen's base card from the 2017 Bunt set, and a rarely seen on this blog a 2007-08 OPC Card featuring Chuck Kobasew of the Bruins.  Still 90 something to go from this set, which has been in the works since I bought packs of it back when it was released in 2007.  No big hurry.  

Thank you for the trade Richard.  Part of the reason that the writing fire has been rekindled a bit in me the last few days.  

Robert

some good ol' fashioned vintage in varying grades

I started off the trade with Craig last night featuring a bunch of checklists from the '77 Topps set.  Tonight, we're going through a few '71 Topps cards.  I sorted them into 3 different photos for our viewing pleasure.

A pair of NFL All-stars, both of them safeties!  They also both look like they're from opposite ends of the age scale.  The bios on the backs of the cards show that they are 7 years apart in age, but the Rick Volk photo looks like a kid during his college (or maybe even high school) days.  

It's nice that you can tell the all-star cards right away;  the NFC cards are solid blue, the AFC cards are solid red, and these are a mix of the two.  

I'm seeing the end of the golden years for the Packers in this set, and I find Zeke Bratkowski, who is the back up to Bart Starr.  Zeke started his career in 1954 with the Bears, had a 2 year gap until he started playing again in 1957.  Played a few years for the Bears and then the Rams before joining the Pack in 1963.  He played back up from 1963-1968, then again had a 2 year gap before playing his final season in 1971.  His only 2 full seasons as a starter were with the Rams in '61 & '62, where he and the team struggled, winning only 3 games over 2 years as the starter.  

I added to this page of AFC players involved in the trade a RC of Marty Schottenheimer I grabbed off of my latest purchase off of eBay.  

Some great names on this scan.  Buck Buchanan (real first name was Junious), one of the greatest linemen for the Chiefs, made All-Pro six straight years and the pro bowl 8 times.  Emerson Boozer (a great name for obvious reasons) was a draft pick in both the AFL (Jets) and NFL (Steelers).  Emerson led the AFL in total TD's in 1967 (13) and the NFL in total TD's in 1972 (14).

So far in the few posts I've done for vintage football sets, I've learned a little something each time.  There will be more to come in the future for sure.

The '71 set is just over 30% done, and the condition of the cards I've received so far has not surprised me in any way.  I'm not expecting anything earth shattering as far as mint cards, and as long as there is no writing or paper loss on them, all is good.  

Aesthetically pleasing might the best way to describe older football cards in my world

Robert

Checklist city

I was able to complete a trade in the past week with one of the biggest traders on the TCDB site, Craig (Known as Dukey Devil).  It was a 70 for 70 football trade, which is probably the biggest football trade I'll pull off ever on the site.

It was split up nice, 13 1971 Topps cards, and the remaining 57 were 1977 Topps.  The one group of cards that I noticed right away were the checklists from the '77 set.

The thing you spot immediately is the more popular teams in the set.  No surprise on this group of 6 that the Packers, Bears and Cowboys feature quite a few players more than the Oilers, Broncos and Chiefs.  The Bears alone have 23 cards in the set.  Another thing I spotted is how beautiful the checklists look, there is not a mark on any of them at all.  That is going to spoil me for finding spotless checklists for the remainder.

I was a bit surprised at how many Cardinals were in the set ( I counted 22 ), as they were in an era where the team had a few talented players, but weren't winning titles.  The '76 football Cardinals went 10-4 and still only finished 3rd in the NFC east behind the Cowboys (11-3) and the Redskins (10-4).  I also learned a little something while writing this post, Don Coryell, he of the Air Coryell teams in San Diego, coached the Cardinals for 5 years (3 straight double digit win seasons) before moving on to the west coast.

I also remembered that 1977 was the Buccaneers first season in the NFL.  Had to have been tough, they were shut out in their first 2 games, only kicked 3 FG's in their 3rd game, and didn't score the first touchdown in team history until the 4th quarter of the 4th game, and it was a defensive TD to boot!  (44 yard fumble return)  Oh and they didn't win a game in '77 going 0-14.  Ouch

I'm sure unlike the 60's sets I've featured lately on the blog, a lot of these checklists should have recognizable names and bring back some football memories for sure.

Robert

Dirty tease

I went on a bit of a spending spree at the end of last week.  I decided to hit up Sportlots to try and knock a couple of want lists down.  Mission succeeded.

In what might be a record shipping time, I received the first of my 2 orders yesterday.  The 2013 A&G want list is all but dead.  Just 2 cards remaining now, the Manny Machado RC and the Pele correct version (yes, I do want the writing on the back).

42 cards were in the lot, 20 of them were very affordable short prints (either 27 or 37 cents).

I took a quick look through the 42 cards while writing the post.  Not one non-ball player in the group.  Plus a lot of them were legends, Clemente, Gehrig, Rickey Henderson, Jeter, Mays, Whitey Ford, etc.

Great group of cards for under $20 to nearly finish this set.  I don't know if the seller was wanting to give me a bit of a heart attack, but this a picture of the snap case he sent the cards with...

Now, I would have been very happy had the case been full of 1961 Topps cards, but I'll settle for what I have now.  Wonder what the other group of cards that I bought from the Sportlots site will arrive in?

Robert

Another slow set build....but I think it will be fun

1962 Topps football.  Certainly not one of the bigger vintage sets out there at just 176 cards.

They're all horizontal as well.

Multiple photos on the front of the card.  Jimmy Patton intercepting a pass, Roger Leclerc being described as a "LB-Kicker" on his card, which I don't think you will not find very often on any player card (certainly not in the modern era).

And these guys just look like football players.  The backs?  Easy for an older guy like me to read.

I find a lot of the newer sets a bit difficult to read, especially if I'm sorting by number (as always); the card numbers now are a lot smaller and on some sets are almost impossible to read, if not find.  Look at that number 156 in the upper left.  Can't mistake that!!

I looked at some of the card prices on COMC while writing this post and learned about Ernie Davis.  Died at 23 before ever playing a professional football game due to leukemia.  What a shame.

Hopefully I'll be able to find an affordable card of his one day.  Wait and see...

Robert

What got me started

I've been writing the blog for 12 years now (haha I missed the blog's anniversary on July 23rd), and for most of that time I had no interest in vintage football.

Sure there was always the vintage hockey interest (I grew up in Canada) and over time the vintage baseball interest came along (the '64 set build helped create that love).

A few months back I stumbled across a '70 Topps football lot on eBay, and my current obsession has become older football sets.  I've been picking up pieces and parts at shows, on eBay and via the trade route on TCDB.

Unlike the baseball and hockey vintage sets which for the most part are pricing me out of completion, I don't believe the same thing is going to happen with football.  As I work on building these sets, I might end up proving myself wrong.  But for starters, I've been having fun acquiring some of the old stuff.

This set I do like, and I've been able to put almost half of it together already.  120 out of 263 are already in house, and I have a COMC order that will put the set over the halfway point.

This set has reminded of what the vintage sets should be.  Old cards.  For the most part, especially with baseball and hockey, I'll be very picky about what I add to the sets.  Most of the cards that I acquire for 60's and 70's builds are usually EX-MT or better.  That can get pricey.

For the football stuff, especially 1972 and before, I'll accept the dinged corners, I'll see the creases that are there and accept the fact that that's how they should be.

I do stick to the hard and fast rule for my vintage, no paper loss.  Even I like to be able to read everything that is on the old card backs, which I'm loving for the football sets.  

It'll be a few weeks before I see my COMC order come in, and I'm looking forward to a pair of cards, Fran Tarkenton and Johnny Unitas '70 Topps.   Between the 2, I paid less than $10 total.  That isn't bad. 

Actually, at that price, this is fun!!

Robert