Ranking the 1960's : No, not the years, man! The Cards....AKA, you're out of your element, Donny!

 

Ranking 1960s Topps baseball cards.

            Now, why in the hell would I do a foolish thing like that. Aren’t the 1960s hallowed territory for baseball cards? The first full decade where Topps was in command? Minus 1963, of course. Although Topps did win that one as well. What I mean to say is, I shouldn’t be ranking 1960s Topps cards. I should be bowing at their altar, as I did as a child, and craving each and every single one I saw, no matter the year, no matter the design.

            I should’ve stayed where I belong. Stuck in the 1980s with my flying cars and Bananarama albums. But foolish men do foolish things.

            So here’s my take on 1960s Topps baseball cards.

 

1965 Topps:

    Not only is 1965 Topps my favorite baseball card design on the decade, it’s probably one of my favorite baseball card designs of all-time by any sports card manufacturing brand. I fell instantly in love with this design as a collector when I was a kid. The white boarder. The bold color band around the player photo. The huge team flag that always caught my eye. Coupled with the icy blue and white card back. It’s a sports card, yes. But 1965 Topps is also a work of art to me. I don’t recall having many 1965 cards at all. Maybe a Mazeroski card because he was one of the more attainable Pirate legends back then, that a kid could afford.

            And maybe I shouldn’t say this because I wasn’t around then, but 1965 Topps Baseball Cards feel like the first true cards of the 1960s. Not that the other years feel stuck in the past. It’s just…like I could see some kid, all hung-up on some girl who was into The Beatles, ripping open these packs and just being wowed by what was inside.

            The Stargell card is probably one of my favorites of Willie as well. Love the posed swinging of the bat. I’m intrigued as to why Pops is wearing a white vestment underneath his jersey instead of the usual black that Pirates players wore. Stargell looks youthful, hungry; he’s on the cusp of the greatness that will make him a Pittsburgh legend. I never owned this card as a kid and it was one of the first Stargell’s that I bought when I began building a PC again.

            I’d frame it if I could.

 

1960 Topps:

            I had one 1960 Topps card when I was a kid. It was a Roberto Clemente card with the left side of the card ripped off. Not half a card, but just brown cardboard where that image of Clemente batting should be.  The one I have as an adult isn’t much better as you can see.

            But I cherish it all the same.

            And if I was doing this ranking as a kid, I probably wouldn’t even be considering 1960 for my second choice. Believe it or not, it wouldn’t been 1968 (we’ll get to why). But the adult collector in me loves this set. The adult collector thinks that Topps started the decade off with a bang. I guess tastes do change.

I love that Topps went horizontal again in 1960. And the color. The dueling colors on player’s name. The big, bold, colorful bar that houses it and the player’s position. The way the image on the left invokes 1958 Topps, but with a sharp close-up photo on the right. I do actually think 1960 Topps has some great photography. The colors really stand out.

            1960 Topps has noted rookie cards! Two sets of them. The Topps All-Star rookie card debuts in this set, and then there’s the Sport Magazine 1960 Rookie Star cards. Both made famous by these two guys.

            And, no, I don’t own them.

            ...but I aspire to own them.

 

1968 Topps:

            I don’t really know what the consensus on 1968 Topps baseball is with other collectors. I’ve heard the design referred to as looking like burlap sacks. I know that between 1968 and 1969, some photos repeat (in cropped form), and that always rubbed some collectors in the wrong way. For me, I generally love 1968 Topps. I think they’re sharp, bolder (whether you like them or not) than a lot of the designs in the decade.

            1968 Topps is indicative of the late 1960s in a way that 1969 Topps isn’t.

            But, to be honest, I feel like there’s something else that attracts me to 1968 Topps baseball cards. And it’s a hard attraction. One that takes a lot to try and quell. And that’s nostalgia. If most cards from the 1960s were unattainable to me as a collector when I was a kid, if there were attainable 60’s cards they usually came from the tail end of that decade. In 1986, 1968 cards weren’t even twenty years old. I had a better shot of getting 1968 or 1969 cards than I did any other year during that decade. So, I had some. And having actual cards from a year enhanced my feelings for them.

            As an adult collector, my feelings for 1968 Topps have pretty much stayed the same.

            1969?

            Not so much.

 

1962 Topps:

            I am a child of my collecting era, which means the Junk Wax Era can do no wrong. One of the sets the era got completely right, in my humble opinion, was 1987 Topps. Even though I built the set a few years ago, and have thousands of doubles, I still long to buy a wax box of 1987 Topps and rip it. The wood borders just really did it for me. Sitting in my bedroom in 1987, a box of cards on the bed, Stand By Me playing on HBO, a sweating can of Coke on my nightstand.

            Ah, there goes that nostalgia again.

            But…there was another wood bordered set in Topps history.

            And that would be 1962.

            As I’ve rekindled my love of 1987 Topps baseball, I’ve also gained a greater appreciation of the 1962 set. I’m repeating myself here, but as a kid, I didn’t see a lot of 1962 unless the cards were under glass at a card show. I have a couple from the year now, and boy do I love looking at them. Love the darker wood design on the card, the way the wood nooks feel grainier and deeper. The way the image does that curling off of the wood thing at the bottom of the card.

            If Topps was going for art in 1962, I’ll gladly keep stopping by that gallery for a look.

 

1964 Topps:

    For my its obvious when I think about cards, I inevitably think about childhood. And I don’t know where I would’ve placed 1964 Topps in terms of a card design, I liked. I knew they existed. I just don’t think I had an opinion on them the way I did the cards I’ve already written about. When I was a kid, with the exception of this Stargell card, his first solo card, I don’t think I paid much time at all on 1964 Topps, while in my futile pursuit of all cards old and vintage.

            But that’s not the case as an adult.

            I’ve fallen completely in love with the 1964 design.

            I know there’s a lot of white. A lot of white at the top that blends into a border that frames the image on the card. But that white is counterbalanced so splendidly by the bright, bold team names at the top of the card in such stark color. Not to mention the thick band of color at the bottom of the card, which houses the players’ names and positions. If 1964 Topps didn’t do it for me as a kid, it certainly catches my eye now.

I just have the Stargell in my growing collection…for now.

 

1963 Topps:

            1963 Topps was another design that I slept on as a child, but absolutely adore now as an adult collector, even though I have yet to add one to my collection. I’m beating a dead horse here by saying that virtually any Topps product from 1952-1964 seemed virtually unattainable to me when I was a kid. So, I simply didn’t bother. But I kind of wished I hung on collecting beyond the age of 18. Knowing me, and the way cards started changing by 1992, I probably would’ve started going back and spending my money on older cards.

            But…there were CDs and books to buy.

            Obviously, the two-for-the-price-of-one is nothing startling to me. Before I’d ever seen a card from 1963, I had my far share of 1983 and 1984 Topps. But it was nice to discover the lineage in the sets. To learn that Topps did harken back to designs from time to time. And 1963 is no slouch. Despite there being two pictures, you get a lot of bang for your buck photo-wise.

Topps keeps it simple with the border surrounding the photo. At least at the top of the card. The bottom of the card is where all of the excitement is. The band of color that houses the player name, position and team takes up almost a fourth of the card. And the bottom of the card is where you also get that second player photo. Usually, a posed action shot of some kind. It’s a sign of the times that in 1963 most of the “action” took place in the secondary picture, and by 1983 and 1984 Topps was giving you all of the action in the card proper and a nice little photo in the subset.

Also, 1963, houses a pretty famous rookie card.

Despite what you may or may not think about the guy.

 

1969 Topps:

            Certainly, a set that gives you Mickey Mantle’s last card and Reggie Jackson’s first card, is no slouch of a set. And 1969 Topps isn’t a slouch. But it’s slipped in value for me as I’ve aged and had more time to spend with other sets from the 1960s. But as a kid, this set, like 1968 Topps, would’ve been one of my favorites, simply because of the access I would’ve had to a set that wasn’t yet 20 years old. I probably had more cards from 1969 in my collection than any other year from that decade.

            To look at the card now though? Well, Topps certainly gives a lot of room for the card image. But it doesn’t give you much else. Just a little circle, floating at the top of the card, for the player’s name and position, and then the team’s name in yellow floating across the bottom of the card. And, in some cases, not even a different photo for a player from the previous year’s set.

            In the year of moon landings and Woodstock, Topps chose to play it as safe as a buzz-cut and a cleanly shaved face.

 

1966 Topps:

            Is it irony or purely coincidence that one of my favorite cards of all-time comes from one of my least-favorite designs from the 1960s? Notice I just said the 60s, because if 1966 Topps were produced now, I’d consider it a godsend among the bland, base product that the company tends to put out year to year. But, yes, the 1966 Roberto Clemente card is one of my favorite cards of all-time. It was a card I was fixated on as a child, and one I made sure to get as an adult. There’s just something haunting about the way Clemente is photographed staring off into the distance. Not 1972 Topps haunting, but I always found the image to be that as well as comforting in a very solitary way.

            The 1966 design itself? Hmmm You get your titled band for the team’s name and your little patch of color at the bottom for player and position. The uneducated-on-photography person in me wonders what advances in photography came about in the 1960s that Topps lent so much of its card space in 1966, 1967 and 1969 to the player photo and kind of did a hands up approach on the actual card design.

 

1967 Topps:

            I’m wondering if the powers that be at Topps, in 1969, said to each other: “Hey, how about we just do 1967’s design, only we put that player info business in a little bubble? Because, looking at 1967 Topps, it feels, at least to me, like that’s exactly what they did. Honestly, from 1966-1969 Topps, with the exception of 1968, it feels like the company was phoning it in. Not that I dislike 1967 Topps. But coming from their run from 1962-1965, it feels like the second year in a row where Topps was, like, meh, we gotta put something out, right? And it’s not like there’s another card company out there pushing us to improve.

            If you’re a photo (and little else) person, 1967 Topps is the card for you.

 

1961 Topps:

            Not a bad design for a card…just not much of a design at all. The 1961 Topps design wouldn’t have felt out of place somewhere between 1966-1969, but just seems rather dull when you have 1960, 1962-1965 surrounding it. Again, a ton of room, if not all of the room, is given over to the player photo. There’s a bar across the bottom that’s unevenly divided into two squares. One for the player’s name and position, and a smaller square for the team’s name. And that’s pretty much 1961 Topps in a nutshell

 

And that’s my take on 1960’s Topps cards. Not sure how I did, and it feels a little illicit ranking what, to me, as I stated previously, a hallowed and reverent decade for baseball cards. But rank we must, for we are human, and if we don’t put our own thumbprint on everything around us…well…then what’s the point? Hope you enjoyed. Hope a few of you called me an idiot out loud. Hope a few of you agreed.

Sorry about all of the Bucco cards!

And the Aaron, Rose, Brooks and Frank Robinson are also, sadly, not mine.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

 

NEXT FRIDAY: I made a trade. So, let’s talk about that. And let’s talk about trading baseball cards.