The Itch to Rip - Topps Super '70s Baseball!

Like many collectors, I have been almost completely shutout from buying any unopened product at retail locations in 2020.  Between the pandemic reducing my trips to these locations drastically, and the flipping vultures who purchase every bit of product the second it hits the shelves, it's been hopeless.  In order to satisfy my itch to rip, I've had to modify my tactics a bit.

It was for these reasons that I recently succumbed to an offer in my daily email digest from Topps.  Most of the time I scroll quickly through the available items, click Delete, and move on with my day.  A few weeks ago though I saw a product that looked intriguing, and that was the Super '70s box (read: pack) you see above.

Each box features a single pack of 20 cards, at a price point of $24.99.  Yes, you're paying $5 more than a retail blaster would set you back, but shipping is free, and as I said above good luck finding a retail blaster these days even if you wanted one.  

Though I was born in the early '80s, and thus missed the '70s entirely, I still have an admiration for the decade and its baseball cards.  I mean, just look at the awesome logo that Topps used on this box:

Sorta looks a little like Reggie Jackson meets Mr. Met to me.  Long hair, a great mustache, tequila sunrise jersey, some cool shades, and blowing a nice bubble too.  I'm no expert, but this is just about a perfect 1970s mascot if you ask me!  This is the first time in a long time that I was impressed enough with the packaging that I couldn't bring myself to toss the box away.  It's small enough anyway, and kind of a fun display piece in my home office/card room.

Opening up the box, you can see that there's an air-gap on the two sides, with the single "deck" of cards in the center.  The cards come in a clear acrylic holder, and there's some black Styrofoam padding there to keep things fitting snugly.

It would have been nice to see Topps design a wax wrapper for these as an excuse to use that fantastic logo once more, but instead it's just some tamper-proof tape around the clear holder.

As you could plainly see in the above photo, the first card out for me was the great speedster Rickey Henderson.  A satisfying first pull.  I really just picked this up for the pure enjoyment of opening something.  I don't plan to complete the set at this point, even though it is somewhat enticing at just 90 cards deep.  Mostly I'm just hoping to get a few favorite players, and Rickey certainly qualifies.  A cool opening card too, given that Henderson debuted in 1979 with Oakland.

It's obvious to me that Topps used the 1977 through 1979 flagship baseball sets as inspiration for the design here.  The little position flag in the lower left is lifted right from '77 Topps, the cursive team name from '78, and the banner with the player name from '79 (though the colored banner contained the team name in that set, rather than the player name).  As expected, this amalgamation results in a very '70s feel for these cards.

If a little over a dollar a card sounds pricey to you (and I agree that it is), I will at least say that Topps took it upon themselves to actually create card backs for these, which I have not always found to be the case with their online-only releases.  They're very well done too, including cartoons (a must-have for a set paying tribute to the '70s), and they managed to fit that awesome Super '70s icon on there too!  I have zero complaints about the design here, bravo Topps!

Second card in, and one of my top five favorite players from childhood.  This one's a keeper for me.  It does introduce one of my first gripes though about this release; I wish Topps would've stuck with subjects who appeared in at least one Major League game between 1970 and 1979.  I get that they have to keep modern fans of the game interested, and that they'd never dare to release a set without a Mike Trout in it these days.  Oh well, is what it is.

This Frank Thomas is just not an attractive card.  A little surprised, and a little disappointed, that more effort wasn't made to find a better photograph of Big Hurt than this one.

I'm sure a more seasoned Dodgers collector might look at this card and say otherwise, but this doesn't seem like an image of Sandy Koufax that I recall seeing used very often on modern cards.  Not bad, though I wish it was cropped out a bit wider so we could see more of that interesting ballpark backdrop.

 

Al Oliver has the distinction of being the first card on the checklist, and the one used in some of the promotional material for the set.  Something a little different at least, not to mention someone who played throughout the entire decade that is this set's inspiration.

 

I was going to complain that this Brooks Robinson card looks a little grainy, but then I remembered that photography wasn't perfect in the '70s either.  Besides, we've got a Walt Disney advertisement on the fence back there.  Yep, I like this one after all.

A decent cartoon on this card too, referencing Brooks' great nickname.

Alan Trammell's card is nice enough, but the best part is actually the back...

...because it references the iconic Paul Molitor/Alan Trammell RC from 1978 Topps!

With Robin Yount's card, we've now settled into a nice little streak of players who actually played in Major League Baseball during the '70s.  As I said with the Koufax above, I don't feel like this image has been over-used by Topps or other card companies over the years.  Nice Yount card, for sure.

Very happy to land a Montreal Expos card in this first pack.  The Hawk's looking pretty mean and muscular here, ready to crush a ball outta the park.

I thought his cartoon was kinda cool as well, with Andre playing up his fans at Wrigley.  A little odd in that he's depicted with the Expos on the front, but I won't be too harsh on Topps for that I suppose.

I am always thrilled to pull a new Clemente card, one of my favorite players from before my birth for sure.  Easily one of my favorite cards in this pack.

Roberto got a pretty good cartoon, too!

Since I don't have much to say about Eric Davis, I'll just point out that these are on a very appropriate Topps Heritage-like card stock.

My least favorite card in the pack.  I'm not even an Astros hater or anything like that, have just never been a big Bregman guy.  It's somewhat jarring to see an active player on the design after all of those retired greats also.

One of the game's all-time great contact hitters, the late Tony Gwynn!  Love the stylin' wrist-bands and that Starter-branded zipper!

Yeah, the active players just don't do much for me.  Guerrero Jr. and Bregman will probably head out the door in trade packages at some future date.

As current players go though, I do like Nolan Arenado.  Don't know if others will agree with me, but I feel he has a shot at Cooperstown if he can patch together another few good years here.

Awesome!  Not only did I get a new Red Sox card for my collection out of the box, but it's also a very appropriate subject for the set.  Fisk had some great baseball cards in the '70s, and this one will certainly have a home in my collection.

Great shot on this card of The Kid, smiling as usual.  Not one, but two Expos cards in this pack!  

That does it for the 18 base cards I pulled, but there were also two inserts to be had...

First up, a Magnificent Mustaches Wade Boggs.  Great idea for an insert set for this release in concept, but a bit short of great in execution, I'd say.  There are only five cards in this insert set.  Think back to all the fantastic facial hair of the '70s, yet this fuzzed-out photograph of Wade Boggs with the Devil Rays (and with a pretty standard, boring mustache, to boot) made the cut?  You can do better than that, Topps!

In addition to the 1970s designs mentioned above, 1975 Topps inspiration comes into play with the inserts for this release, with different colored upper and lower borders on each card.

If I was a little bitter over my first insert, the second one made up for it.  Nolan Ryan was my absolute favorite player growing up, and I was happy to see this Ultimate Uniforms insert in my pack!  I believe this is the same photograph used on Nolan's 1981 Topps flagship card, but I could be mistaken.  Either way, a great end to the pack for me personally.

Topps really loved alliteration when it came to naming the inserts in this set, as aside from the Magnificent Mustaches and Ultimate Uniforms inserts that I pulled, there are also Happening Hairdos, Memorable Managers, and Spectacular Spectacles insert cards that you can pull from these packs.

All in all, that was a fun break for $25.  Are there things I'd change about the release?  Sure, it's not perfect, but it was an entertaining rip and made for a good blog post.  At just $25, it's a lot cheaper than many of the products that Topps is peddling online these days, and brought me more satisfaction than many blasters I've opened in my day.  I actually picked up a second pack of the stuff, but am keeping it unopened for now.  Maybe I'll tear into it on a rainy day in the future, or maybe I'll sell it if prices keep going up over time.  Not sure yet...

What's your take on Topps' Super '70s release?  Interesting?  Over-priced?  Have you purchased any of these packs, or any other online products from Topps in recent months?  Do you think they're a viable solution at a time like this when it's fairly impossible to find packs in stores?  I actually found the price point and free delivery to my door in the COVID age pretty attractive, enough so that I purchased two packs of another online-only product that I'll be showing as soon as it arrives.  I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments though.

In case I'm not back tomorrow with a post, I'd like to wish a Merry Christmas to everyone who stops by here, and to all collectors out there!  Enjoy the holiday, and be safe as well as merry!

Cheap Slabs - Strikeout Feats!

Time for the latest installment of Cheap Slabs, in which I show off a graded card that I acquired for less than $25.  Tonight, we have a really unique card featuring one of my all-time favorite players...

Maybe not the most aesthetically pleasing or creative design here, but what this card represents is kind of cool.  In the 1983 season, Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton and Gaylord Perry all surpassed the great Walter Johnson on the career strikeouts list.  This was no small feat, as Johnson finished his career with an amazing 3,508 strikeouts.  For these three (who are all enshrined in Cooperstown) to surpass a total that high, each in the same season, is just awesome, and I'm glad that Topps dedicated a Highlight card to commemorate it in the '84 set.

As much as I like Gaylord Perry and Steve Carlton, it was Nolan Ryan that drew me to this card earlier this year.  He, Will Clark, and Cal Ripken, Jr. were the first three players I ever collected as a kid, and so I still search out Nolan Ryan cards to this day.  I'm working on a graded run of his base flagship Topps cards from his '68 RC through his final '94 issue, but I still have a few holes left to plug.

Here's a look at the back, which gives you a brief write-up on each player surpassing The Big Train, so that you can see what date it occurred on for each of these three hurlers.

While I'm mainly sticking to Nolan's primary Topps card for my complete career run project, I'll gladly stray and pick up other slabbed Ryan cards like this one if the price is right.  It certainly was with this card, purchased in July of this year for just $4.99!

That's all for this installment of Cheap Slabs, thanks as always for stopping by!

Odds & Ends

My mind seems to be a bit frazzled lately, understandably.  In some respects I'm finding it hard to focus within my hobbies, so let's just embrace that and go with a random post for today featuring a bunch of odds & ends. 

First of all, it's Star Wars Day for those of you who aren't aware (May the Fourth Be with You!).  Let's take a look at a handful of favorites from my admittedly small Star Wars card collection...

I love buybacks, and I love Star Wars, so of course I love Star Wars buybacks.  These were included in a 40th Anniversary set a couple of years back.  I don't seek them out much if ever anymore, but I did accumulate a dozen of them including this classic R2-D2/C-3PO card.

Since I also love acetate cards, I'm draw to the Topps Star Wars High Tek releases.  I'd never bust a box of this myself as it's relatively expensive, but I do grab singles off of COMC (or at least did...) from time to time.

I love this one because, while it's not generally considered among the franchise's best films by most hardcore fans, I really do enjoy Return of the Jedi.  We had a home-recorded VHS version when I was growing up and my brothers and I watched it dozens of times.  This card reminds me of that epic scene from that film with Jabba the Hutt making the protagonists walk the plank in the desert.

Since I enjoyed Return of the Jedi so much, I'm one of those fans who isn't bothered by the Ewoks at all.  In fact, I'm not too proud to admit that I own both made-for-TV Ewoks movies from the '80s in my Amazon video library (and have watched them both within the past year).  This "Logray" auto was a cool, cheap pick-up off of COMC back in the day.

Last Star Wars card for today, I promise.  This riff on the '80-81 Topps basketball design is a great homage to some of the villains of the franchise.  Anyway, that concludes our brief look at Star Wars.  I may watch one, or two, or three of the films from the original franchise tonight as a tribute.

Side note, I'd really like to pick up a copy of the Larry Bird/Magic Johnson RC from this set someday for my Cardboard Keepers collection, but wow is that card in demand!

Moving on...

Here's another of those Helmar Polar Night art cards I picked up last summer.  These don't draw many views or much reaction in their own posts, so I figured I'd lump this one in here to get it cleared out of my scan folder.  Love the old school catcher's gear.  I'm telling you, Helmar makes some absolutely beautiful and vibrant cards.

What else?  Well, I've been using the increased amount of spare time that comes with sheltering in place to make amazing progress on organizing and condensing my collection.  It's something I started long before this pandemic, but have really been able to fast-track.  My ultimate goal is to have every card in my household scanned, added to my inventory on TCDB, and neatly sorted to where I can locate any card instantly.  It's a tall order, but it's a marathon not a race, and I'm enjoying the process.  In fact, as great a feeling as that accomplishment will be, there will be a little disappointment mixed in if I ever do get there.

The process has forced me to confront quite a few "I'll get to it some other time" projects that I'd been procrastinating on for a long time, which has been cathartic I have to say.  For example, I recently went through a childhood baseball card album I had featuring my star player cards.  The binder itself was in pretty rough shape after many years of storage in my parents' basement, but I finally went through it.  I chucked some cards that were absolutely beat, as well as the binder and sheets themselves, but I was able to salvage quite a few awesome cards and re-welcome them into my collection proper:

I loved this card back in the day.  Sure, McGwire's true recognized rookie card came back in the 1985 Topps set, but he was pictured with Team USA on that card.  It was his 1987 release where we got our first glimpse at the slugger in Oakland A's green.  When I was ten years old I figured this card would make me rich someday!

Sportflics (or SportFlix, as noted here) made some really off-the-wall cards in the year or two before I wrapped up collecting for the first time.  I absolutely loved them.  This card takes me back to sitting on my buddy Shawn's bed on a summer day with our cards spread around negotiating trades.  I actually would really like to finish this particular insert set, if memory serves it's only six cards in size.

Even though they don't scan so well, I also adore these Cyclone Squad inserts.

Was happy to find a nice, mint 1989 Fleer Nolan Ryan in the binder.  He's one of the players I'd love to complete an '80s run of at some point, and this was a hole I needed to plug as far as that endeavor goes.

Ditto for this '84 Ripken.  I actually purchased this at an antiques store in Putnam, CT somewhere between 25 and 30 years ago.  I can still recall how excited I was on the drive home to have a copy of this one.

I do not recall the origins of this Fleer card, however.  I think I'm getting close to having most of Cal's '80s cards from the major producers in my collection at this point.  I'll have to do a formal tally once I finish my organization here...

I've talked numerous times about my love of 1994 Stadium Club here on the blog.  Like my all-time most nostalgic set, 1990 Topps, I can totally understand how some collectors would not be very into this design.  I was 12 years old though when this set hit shelves in the summer of '94, and I couldn't get enough of these.

Not much to say about this one, except that 1990 Leaf was a great set.  I am trying to reduce the size of my collection these days, so I have to really prize a set in order to try completing the entire thing.  To me, 1990 Leaf falls just short of that threshold, but I do hang onto Red Sox cards and stars from the release for now anyway.

Next up, a couple of cool subset cards salvaged from my Rickey Henderson pages.  Even back then as a kid some obsessive qualities were present, as I'd organize my cards by player within the binder, alphabetically by last name.  Then within each player's section they'd be organized by year, then by brand alphabetically, then by card number.

Always been a fan of Rickey, so these two (which are in fine shape) were no-brainers to adopt into my adult collection here.

As was this one, a 1989 Topps Traded card that signifies Rickey's return to Oakland after his stint with the Yankees!

Just a regular old base card here from a mid-'90s Score release.  Despite my drastic reduction in collection size, I still find it hard to part with any Griffey card that's not a double.

One more from '94 Stadium Club!

See prior comment about Griffey cards.

A 1997 Pinnacle Nomar Garciaparra here.  This would have probably been one of the last cards I acquired as a kid.  I was a freshman in high school when this set came out, and had pretty much put sports card collecting behind me for the next ten years.

Loved me some Will the Thrill back in the day.  I actually still have a decent-sized player collection of his, which I'm about halfway through entering on TCDB.  It's mostly cheap singles like this one, but I do have a couple of autographs and relics in the mix too just to spice it up and give it a little variety.

Always liked the image Topps chose for his '93 flagship card.

Here's one from later on, with the Rangers.  Like the Nomar above, this would have been acquired just as the sun was setting on my childhood baseball card collecting days.

Who else remembers what a big deal the foil ROOKIE pennants on early '90s Fleer Ultra were?  Maybe it was just me, but among my buddies these held a premium as far as trading went.  When I came across this one featuring HOFer Mike Mussina it made me chuckle.

I recall quite a few of these Upper Deck Comic Ball cards being around in our card boxes as kids.  While they don't do a whole lot for me now (Topps Kids is a way better set in that realm), I had to hang onto this one featuring The Texas Express.  Also, I guess this counts as half a Red Sox card due to the cartoon portion?

That's a wrap as far as the cards I held onto from that particular portion of that binder.  Let's see, what else...?

From the "What was I thinking?" files, here's a slabbed 1979-80 Scoring Leaders card.  I picked this up a year or two ago because I was on a run of adding new Gretzky cards to my collection, but in retrospect this was a silly purchase.  It ran me less than $20, but thanks to Topps' decision to black out the names on all the cards in their '80-81 release and make them "scratch-off" it's not a set I'm all that fond of.

I guess you can't really go wrong with a PSA 9 Gretzky that pays homage to his amazing rookie season, right?  I mean, he's the GOAT!  Honestly though, when I get restocked on bubble mailers and feel better about frequent trips to the post office I'll probably sell this card off and put the funds towards something I'll enjoy more.

Speaking of the GOAT, there are some that feel French phenom Kylian Mbappe is or will be the greatest soccer player in the world.  Mentioned in the conversation anyway alongside names like Pele, Messi or Ronaldo.  When cleaning through my "other sports" box I came across two of these Panini Instant World Cup cards from the tournament where he really became a household name among soccer fans back in 2018.

These are sort of like the Topps NOW of the World Cup, limited in print run to however many Panini sold at the time.

It's been absolutely crazy what Mbappe's cards have been selling for lately.  I've heard that the Michael Jordan documentary is leading to spikes in card prices for some of the other "greatest players" in their respective sports.  I don't know if that's the cause or not, but I do know his cards have been selling for absolute bananas prices.

While I'm holding onto these two (and they're not all that valuable yet anyway), I did part with four other Mbappe cards recently as part of two separate but equally awesome "eBay flips".  I'll have those posted to the blog soon, and believe me the results are pretty incredible.  Right up there with my recent maneuver that led to the Michael Jordan RC even!

This post is getting long though, and I've got to wait for some of the cards from those flips to arrive in the mail anyway, so for now we'll call it for today and leave you in suspense on that front.  Thanks for stopping by.  Until next time...