Category Archives: 1975 Reprint

1975 Reprint, 1975 Topps, Card Compared to 75, Kmart, Topps

1982 Kmart Baseball Cards

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One of the cool things about collecting cards is finding something shiny that leads you down a new path. I was scanning eBay listings and saw a glitch in my matrix, a Fred Lynn card that was unlike any other I’d seen:

It wasn’t the #622 Fred Lynn rookie card photo that I knew:


Look at Fred’s photo and notice it just looks weird. As in… what’s that white blob below his face?

It shouldn’t have shown up in my card search, but it was mislabeled. It was part of the 1982 Kmart 20th Anniversary AL & NL MVP’s Baseball Picture Cards Bubble Gum Collector’s Series.


Kmart box front

This set was co-branded with Topps – marked as a limited edition. Limited is ironic, there are so many unopened packs for sale it’s akin to the 90s mass overproduction. And that’s awesome because it makes a vintage pack break affordable.

What I like about this set:

  • an full (and likely unedited) rookie card photo of Fred Lynn – no future reprints have this view.
  • includes likely the first 1975 tribute cards
  • it’s cheap… you can get a set for less than 5 bucks including shipping – there’s your blue light special!
  • the experience of opening a pack of 44 “vintage” cards (complete with a stale stick of gum)


Back of box checklist

The 1975 Topps set is my favorite, but I’m not a fan of the shared four player rookie cards. The three rookies per card format in 1973 was pretty good, and then for some reason Topps started cramming in four tiny faces on a card in 1974. So this Lynn card rights that wrong and on its own made it worth getting the set. The only other ’75 reprint in the set is Joe Morgan:

Update: After I wrote this I found another blog post about this card from a while back

1975 Reprint, Topps

1975 Stamped BuyBacks

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In the middle of completing a 1975 Topps Baseball set, I found some 75s with foil stamps on eBay that caught my attention.

There were 3 stamps used in 2014 and 2015 and for whatever reason, it feels like having a card with each stamp completes my ’75 collection. So this is what I got:

The backstory is that Topps bought vintage cards (including ones from 1975), stamped them with silver foil and inserted them into new 2014 and 2015 packs as “buyback” cards.

The 2014 stamped buybacks have a “Topps 75th” logo in two sizes. As far as I know, the smaller logo is from Series 1 and the larger one is from Series 2. The logo represents their 75th anniversary (which technically was in 2013). I think there were two cards per Hobby Box, but if anyone knows for sure let me know.


2014 Foil Stamps (series 1 on the left)

This year, Topps stamped buyback cards with a “Topps Original 2015” foil stamp and inserted two in each Series 1 Hobby Box (36 packs per box, 50 cards per pack). This continues in the Series 2 Hobby boxes (I’ve seen Series 2 buybacks hit eBay with the same stamps – so 2015 has just one type of stamp).


2015 Foil Stamp

Most of the cards I’ve seen so far have been in exmt or lesser shape and commons – the exception was a Schmidt, which cost exponentially more ($36 on eBay).

While writing this, I was looking for more info about the 2014 logos and found Night Owl’s recent post. He’s trying to collect as close to a complete set as possible.