Today we’ll see a ton of tributes to Yogi Berra’s passing. Mine is in the form of pictures. So about four thousand words…
Tag Archives: 1975
Mail Call: Astros Uniforms 75 vs. 89
I’m always interested in any cards with players from the 1975 Topps set, and Bru from Remember the Astrodome delivered with a stack of cards. That motivated me to organize my cards and find some Astros he could use. It took a while (in between other projects), which explains the month long hiatus here.
I’ll break this mail call into two posts, starting with Astros uniforms. I really liked them growing up. They fit right in with clothes we wore those days (like Ocean Pacific t-shirts). Even today their iconic outfits from the mid-70s and 80s takes me back to those days.
The Astros had tame-looking uniforms in the 75 Topps cards:
They didn’t match my reality of what the Astros wore. It’d take another year to highlight their new threads on cardboard. 1976 SSPC Roger Metzger and 1976 Topps Joe Niekro look like they’re still getting used to their new outfits:
What started me on this path was one of the cards Bru sent. Buddy Bell was an Astro for a year but he was wearing a different outfit than I remembered. After digging into it, turns out there were four incarnations of what are dubbed Tequila Sunrise uniforms. These lasted until 1993 and the 89 Upper Deck card shows him in the third version:
The 1975 Buddy I knew played for the Indians (so he’ll always seem out of place in an Astros uniform):
There’s also a cool page I found on mlb.com with a slideshow of Astros uniforms throughout the years (starting with them as the Colts in 1962). I wasn’t planning a post about uniforms, so thanks for the inspiration and for sending the cards Bru!
What’s an unopened 1975 pack worth?
An eBay auction for 24 unopened 1975 Topps baseball card packs ended tonight with a winning bid over $7200.
So for that person, it’s worth $300.50 per pack (and $30 per card).
If these contain a Gem Mint 10 of a Yount, Brett, Ryan or Aaron, the buyer’s a winner.
But what’s odd is single unopened packs have sold on eBay for $50 to $80. So something doesn’t add up. Or the bidders just lost control.
1982 Kmart Redux
The 1982 Kmart MVP Baseball card set that celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kmart’s 1962 opening includes what I think should’ve been the Fred Lynn rookie card (covered here). Also included is Kmart nostalgia (I still remember walking by those flashing blue light specials as a kid).
The set breaks down like this:
- 41 cards of MVPs from 1962 to 1981. You’d expect the MVP cards to have an even number, but there are 3 in 1979. That’s the only year with a tie (Willie Stargell and Keith Hernandez – see here for more details on the voting).
- 3 Highlight cards like this one:
- 28 are of players featured in the 1975 set (including rookies and future MVPs: Jim Rice, George Brett, Keith Hernandez, and Fred Lynn)
- Players with two cards in this set: Johnny Bench (1970 & 1972 MVP), Joe Morgan (1975 & 1976), Mike Schmidt (1980 & 1981), Pete Rose (1973 MVP and Highlight)
- 26 are also in the 1975 Topps MVP subset, which have two photos per card (#200 to 212). But the Kmart cards have larger photos since there’s one photo per card:
It’d be nice to own the original cards represented in these reprints
I don’t know how many were produced. I was able to find one clue here where a forum post noted 2,000 Kmart stores initially got from 576 to 1,152 sets per store. That amounts to between 1.1 to 2.3 million sets. Even a production run that was a fraction of that would explain why there’s still so many unopened packs
Kmart also made similar sets with different themes in four other years (all with 33 cards per set): 1987 Stars of the Decades, 1988 Memorable Moments, 1989 Dream Team, 1990 Superstars. The Wrigley Wax blog has a good overview of them all here.
Kmart also made a 726 card OPC set in 1980 but I don’t know much about it (other than they’re available on eBay in cello packs for cheap):
The Kmart cards may not have much monetary value, but card collecting doesn’t have to be about value. If all cards cost 10 cents, I’d still collect them. And wouldn’t that make it a lot easier?
Card Spotlight: 660 Hank Aaron
Given we’ll get the voting results on Tuesday for the Greatest Living Major League Baseball player. My choice isn’t just about the player stats, it’s also about the person. I don’t choose a friend based on who makes the most money or hit the most home runs. Those things don’t outweigh other traits. I base it on their total character.
These are the contenders:
I pick Mr. Aaron. He stands out not just because of his drug-free home run achievement, but also the strength he had to put up with all the junk leading to getting to 715. When I first read of the threats and animosity other humans sent his way, it reminded me that there are people out there that have nothing else to do in life but hate. It takes a really strong person to live through that.
So that’s why he gets my vote. He’s on Topps first card of the 1975 set and also on this last one.
I hope you enjoy the 86th All Star Game.
1982 Kmart Baseball Cards
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 Stamped BuyBacks
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.