goin' for it

I'm a set builder. A terrible one but a builder none the less. As it stands I have every Topps flagship issue from 1982 to 2011. Want to know how many of those I completed myself? Three. A paltry three sets I completed myself. Those being the years 1987 (due to childhood significance), 2010 and 2011 (out of convenience for being recent and buying a ton). Oh sure I've put together a few others, 2010 Chrome and Opening Day, 2011 Allen & Ginter and 2009 Topps T206 (which is my greatest victory yet, some of those short prints were tough finds) but those were merely because again, I overbought and decided to finish it up. Others I've failed at were 1954 Topps and 2011 Heritage. the 1954 just became too costly and I had to sell off most of the bigger cards (Aaron, Banks, Kaline) to get by when it got rough in the summer. The Heritage just became way too annoying with 75 short prints at the end. Like I mentioned way back while it was fresh, I really didn't want to pay $3 a card for a no name player just because he was a short print. That set got sold too, in its incomplete state. Let someone else worry about it. I won't be doing Heritage ever again.

Today though, my local shop had asked me to open up and keep watch until he got there (opened at noon, he was there by 1:30). I decided to rummage through and sort out his two vintage boxes. Being around 6000 total or so, I had my work cut out for me. Thankfully most of it was labeled and kinda sorted. Meaning I'd find chunks of 1977s then some 75s and so on. While going through all these I had a moment of clarity and thought about set collecting and how fun it is. It was then that I decided I was going to try for a new set to collect. Which one you ask? See below:

Thats right. Good old 1973 Topps. What a set. These are the top nine cards I got today along with a few other stars (Carew, Palmer, Carlton, Fingers, Garvey) and around just under 200 commons. I already had the Hank Aaron and in the above picture I got what is my first Clemente card in his playing days, his final card, sadly. Why the home run and strike out leaders? Because they "book" for $40 and $25 respectively. Crazy right? Well as far as the commons go, they are all in various conditions and I won't be too critical in that regard when collecting this set due to the age. 1973 has no significance for me as a year but as a set it has a bunch of it. Its the final year for individual series, it has great action photography even still and it has a ton of Hall of Famer and all time greats. A solid year for Topps. I did toy with the idea of collecting this set a while back but never acted on it. Now is the time while I've become a little jaded with recent releases. Plus I think it'll be a great venture into collecting a set thats awesome and not difficult to find but still does represent a small challenge to complete. If anyone has some extras, let me know and we'll work something out. I'm watching a few lots on eBay that end tonight so I hope to score some more of the commons that way.

I do plan on getting around to my take on the Blog Bat Around, so keep an eye out for that soon. Work isn't as bananas this week so I should have some time to post a little more regularly.

nineteen seventy-three

As I sit here listening to my beat copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl (complete with cracks and pops and full warmth that only vinyl can bring), it makes me think that 1973 was a pretty damn good year. Look at these:

1973 Topps is where its at. I know I talked of how good Upper Deck photography was, but this set is definitely the innovator in the picture department. Very weird though, it seemed as if this set were just an experiment. Why? Well look at the years that follow. In fact, look until around 1992, because Topps did do action shots but it wasn't until that year that they stepped it up (this time probably due to Upper Deck directly). 1973 had so many action shots, that it really stand out as a fan favorite. I know its more than a few of you guys favorite year for Topps baseball. Seems that it was a year of change for Topps, as it was the final year for the series release format. The design was simple, yet classy and clean all at once. Nice big picture on the front with a great photo to go right in there. While they aren't all action shots but the ones that are really stand out. Too bad Topps didn't follow suit with the next 20 years of releases, otherwise we wouldn't have to have so many cards like this:

Three superstar players, and this is what they give us? Come on, Henderson was stealing bases in his sleep! I am digging Eddie's 'stache though. If these guys were playing and in the 1973 set, I'll bet their cards would be awesome.

1973 - a year of innovation in music and baseball cards.