I used to do this more often but my work schedule doesn’t always allow me to get to the local card shop, Stevens Creek Sports Cards, that has a wide array of vintage cards, including a load of “price-friendly” boxes featuring lesser condition vintage at fantastic prices. (Side note: they have a great selection of graded vintage on eBay too)
I had about 90 minutes to spare on Thursday so I made the trip and went through a dozen boxes or so. The haul on this date wasn’t as heavy as usual, but I found some nice additions to my collection and some nice bargains that I couldn’t pass up.
We’ll start with a pair of vintage HOFers. Here is a 1969 Topps Deckle Carl Yastrzemski and a 1971 Topps Willie McCovey. They present well for the price of $1 each.
I think this is the fourth 71 McCovey I own. Go figure.
I always wanted the 1952 Topps Gus Zernial card. I finally scored one at a good price. If you need to ask why I wanted it all you have to do is look at the picture.
As you know my big project is to obtain rookie cards of every guy who played on the Majors. It’s a never ending task and an improbably goal. But it does make things fun. Here’s a 1965 Topps high-number Frank Linzy and Bob Schroder rookie card.
Here’s the 1959 Topps rookie card of former Giants player and manager Felipe Alou. It has a crease, but is centered nicely.
I like the 1964 Topps set, especially the dual-player rookie cards. Here is one of solid Major Leaguer Rico Carty and counterpart Dick Kelley.
Every time I dig through these boxes I find myself stopping when I get to the 1960 Topps section. I always pause when I see the rookie card of Frank Howard because I keep forgetting if I already owned it. Well, my online list didn’t show me owning the card of the 1960 National League Rookie of the Year so ai picked up this decent looking one for what I think was a good price.
About five years ago while attending the annual Tri-Star show at the Cow Palace in San Francisco I picked up a badly miscut copy of the 1973 Topps Dwight Evans rookie card for $5. When I saw this nicely centered copy in Thursday for $6, I figured it was time for an upgrade.
Sometimes a deal is just too good to pass up. True, I already own a 1957 Topps rookie card of Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski. And yes, mine is in better shape. But I couldn’t resist buying this one … Even in its present condition.
Speaking of Hall of Famers, I found a BGS 4.5 1961 Billy Williams in the show case at a great price.
There are three more cards that I purchased but none of them are vintage. But two of them were priced so well I couldn’t pass on them, and the other is of a guy who is having a breakdown-out season.
It’s hard to pass on a good-looking Derek Jeter rookie card at $4. No obvious flaws anywhere.
There is zero chance I pass on one of the most iconic rookie cards of the early 1990s, the 1992 Bowman Mike Piazza, at this price … Even if there is some issue with one corner.
And lastly, just before ai checked out , I located a 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Picks Dallas Kuechel in the showcase or $5.
It’s a little weird spending $5 for Kuechel considering that it was more expensive that the aforementioned Mazeroski, but when you see something you want/need you should pounce. Besides, it’s never a bad thing to support your local card shops.
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A new quirk for 2019 Topps Heritage?
Posted in Commentary with tags baseball, baseball cards, heritage, homage, Minnesota Twins, sports, sports cards, Topps, Topps Heritage, vintage, Washingtoin Nationals, Washington Senators on March 2, 2019 by Cardboard IconsThe Topps Heritage line is a fun set to collect or view from afar each year. For the most part, Topps stays true to the original design and quirks, often mimicking the errors of the past to maintain that sense of nostalgia that’ve come to embrace over the years
Of course in recent memory they’ve also added a slew of variations to make for extreme chase cards in some cases. But today I think I found a new tradition, one that doesn’t appear to be a throwback to the 1970 set.
While sorting a bit of the Heritage that I picked up this week I noticed something that doesn’t appear to be an homage to the original set. Grab your stacks of Heritage and thumb through them and pull out your base cards of the Washington Nationals and Colorado Rockies. Remember, I’m talking base cards, not the multi-player rookie cards of subsets.
Now turn them over and look at the bio box.
Do you see it?
Right below the player’s biographical information is the team name: Washington Nationals or Colorado Rockies. Now go look at the other card backs. You’ll notice that cards of the other teams don’t have the team name on back.
I asked a hobby friend of mine what the deal was with this and he seemed to not know about it, suggesting that maybe it was a wink to something from 1970. I figured that may have been the case too, so I looked and I did not see the team name on the back of the 1970 cards.
I also noticed something else … a handful of the Nationals cards in the 2019 set (cards 1-400 not the SPs 401-500) corresponded by number with cards of the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins from the 1970 set, which is a fun hat tip since there is some lineage between the Senators-Twins-Nationals franchises and locations.
Have you noticed any other fun quirks to the 2019 Heritage set? Leave a comment below.
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