1980: The Beginning of an Era for Me....But the End of One for Topps

What’s that old joke? How do you make God laugh? Make a plan.

            I can’t remember where I heard it. From a movie, I think. But it’s fitting this week, because while I had planned to skip on the memories and write a post about two of the local card stores that I frequent (as much as one can frequent anything this year), my plans fell through for one simple reason: Covid-19. Let’s just say there were precautionary issues with both places. Since I’m not in the business of getting a virus and possibly dying, I abstained from entering either establishment. That said, your loss is also my loss. You don’t get an essay on two card stores, and I didn’t get to purchase the much need supplies (and yes, fine, some 1988 score rack packs for 50 cents apiece) that I much needed.

            Instead you get to sit back and read as I reminisce on 1980 Topps baseball cards. The end of an era for the Topps Corporation, but the beginning of one for me.

            Was it my grandma or my dad who bought me my very first pack of baseball cards in 1980? The memory is fuzzy. For lineage purposes I want to say it was my old man. He’d given me the sport of baseball. He’d taken me to my first live Pirates game in the spring of 1980. Why not be the one who bestowed baseball cards on me as well?

But other than coins, my dad wasn’t a card collector. He had no slightly used cards from the collection of his youth to pass along to little old me, once I caught the collecting bug. And he was never much interested in baseball cards those years that I was in the heat of collecting. But the bank he worked in on Butler Street was across an alley from the five and dime where that inaugural pack of cards was bought. It could’ve been him. My mom, brother and me picking him up after work, as we were a one-car family, and a barely running car at that. The old man needed a pack of smokes. Hey, why not grab a 25-cent pack of baseball cards for the kid?

            More logically it was probably my grandma. She watched us from time to time as kids. We lived a block away from each other, at the time, in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh. My grandma frequented that five and dime for her daily lottery and smokes. It seems reasonable that I would’ve gone in there with her. More reasonable that I spied that royal blue pack of cards amidst the candy and gum, the big baseball front in center with the words BASEBALL written across it in bold black. An Adam West Batman power BOOM! of yellow in the right-hand corner advertising 15 cards inside! The smaller writing in white on the left informing this budding reader that there was also to be one stick of gum tucked somewhere in the package.

            Like this here:

Baseball cards? What were baseball cards? It seemed prophetic that I would pick something called baseball cards over the usual candies my grandma would get for me on these trips. As I remember it, it was a late sunny afternoon. My memories of living in the city of Pittsburgh are always bathed in a warmth. The way a summer afternoon of cloudless blue skies looks as it begins to bend toward the evening. Kids playing in the field at Arsenal Middle School. Samantha racing up to the fence when she saw me, excited, even though we shared the same concrete, communal backyard of yellow-bricked Denny Street row houses. My grandma calling her my girlfriend to our mutual embarrassment. She’s a girl and she’s your friend, grandma had to clarify. Me a six-year-old kid in a microcosm of city that smelled like car exhaust, the greasy spoon of fries and burgers being cooked up at the Eat’n’Park, and the faint wafts of brewing beer from the Pittsburgh Brewing Company where my grandpap and uncle both worked.

But baseball cards. My mind’s eye remembers my small hands shuffling through the cards as we walked. That bright, alluring package most likely discarded along the sidewalk, it being a few years before Pittsburgh pride would be picking up in a big marketing push. I remember little of that initial pack other than I wanted more. And that I got my second most favorite player in the whole world.

            This guy:

To look at him Ed Ott was your average, stocky, mostly-platoon catcher with a little but not a lot of pop in his bat. A member of the 1979 world series Pittsburgh Pirates team, on his last year in Pittsburgh in 1980, with only one year of pro ball left in him out in Anaheim. A career .259 hitter remembered by only the most diehard of fans. But I loved him. After Willie Stargell he was my favorite Pirate. He made this left-hander want to be a catcher in 1980 the way that Johnny Ray would make this left-hander want to be a second baseman only a year or so later. I played both positions and was good at neither, eventually succumbing to the usual lefty spots at first base or out in right field. For years I cursed my left-handedness in the way that I cursed Pirate games when Steve Nicosia played instead of Ed Ott.

            But there he was in my very first pack of baseball cards ever. 1980 Topps. The white borders, the small pennant at the top left listing the player’s position. The big pennant on the bottom right listing the team name. The big, colorful photos of the players with that faux signature on the card. 1980 didn’t need no All-Star cards. They slapped that honor right on the regular players’ card. I actually preferred when Topps did that. The blue and black backs that really did it for me.

            A rookie card of this guy!!

            Although I’d be hapy to have one of his:

To me, the 1980 set of Topps baseball cards is a classic. One of my favorite sets of all-time. I tend to gravitate to that set more than any others. There’s a golden aura around that set for me. When I got back into collecting in the summer of 2019, the old-time players that I decided to start collecting again, if they had a 1980 Topps card, they were among my first purchases

Some collectors don’t like 1980 Topps. Some see it as another set during a drab, lull period for Topps, that went from 1979 to around 1983. With the Rickey Henderson card one can make the small argument that 1980 was the moment the rookie card become the thing to collect (although more likely it was in 1983 or 1984 with the arrival of Don Mattingly cards). That may all be so. And the great thing about collecting is the diverse and varied opinions of collectors. What attracts you and what doesn’t. As I said I love 1980 Topps. I plan on building the whole 726-card set very soon, or whenever I figure out how Ebay works. Maybe it’s for sentimental reasons that I love the set. 1980 Topps being my first pack and all. My first experience with baseball cards. You never forget your first time, right? Maybe it’s the time and place that does it for me too.

1980 would be my last year living in the city of Pittsburgh. A year later my family would be living in Wellsburg, West Virginia, a place that was less than an hour away but seemed the world away from everything I knew. I was unhappy. I felt alone even among other kids. My nickname is Jay, but the principal at the Catholic school made everyone call me John. The people in Wellsburg seemed nice…but we were city slickers to them. Some inbred shot my dog, but thankfully only in the leg.

I began the kid version of binge-eating to cover the lonesomeness and anxiety. In Wellsburg, I got fat. I developed what would become a lifelong issue and obsession with my weight. My family would move back to the Pittsburgh area in 1982. But it was to the suburbs instead. No more walks along Butler Street in the summer sun. No more sights. No more smell of brewing beer or burgers. No Samantha racing toward me from the green fields at Arsenal Middle School. No packs of cards from the five and dime.

So, if 1980 Topps feels like a beginning for me, I guess it also feels like an ending in ways. 1980 was an ending for the Topps corporation though, at least in terms of being the only kid on the block. Here’s the short of the situation: The Fleer corporation had been trying to make inroads into the world of card collecting as far back as the early 1960s, even producing a small set in 1963 until Topps sued and had it blocked. After various other attempts throughout the 60s, the Fleer corporation finally sued the Topps corporation and the Major League Baseball Players Association to try and end this monopoly.

In 1980 a judge ruled in Fleer’s favor, ending Topps’ one company reign and forcing the MLBPA to issue license to other card manufacturers, thus giving the world the shaky starts of both the Fleer and Donruss brands in 1981. 

More lawsuits followed over gum and stickers, the ruling was actually overturned, but that didn’t matter. Topps’ control had officially ended. By 1989 the collecting world would have five major sports card brands out there competing. In 2010 Topps once again became the sole manufacturer of officially licensed baseball cards. And, man, do I miss the competition.

But back then…all a kid wanted was his cards. I didn’t care who was making them!

 

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

 

*The Quote that I mentioned at the beginning on this essay IS from a movie. First though I believe it came from a joke by Woody Allen. “I believe in the old Yiddish proverb, We Plan, God Laughs. Where I remember it from is from Noah Baumbach’s excellent 1995 movie, Kicking and Screaming. The quote is said by a bartender by the name of Chet (played by Eric Stoltz) who uses the quote as advice to another character.

If you want to learn more about the Fleer/Topps Lawsuit  Here are couple of links:

 THIS

Or THIS

Matt Sammon's EXCELLENT podcast Wax Ecstatic goes into detail on the Topps vs Fleer litigation in

episode 93's discussion on 1980 Topps Baseball Cards. If you don't have iTunes or Spotify, you can find the episode right HERE

 

Next Friday:  I’m going to TRY and hit up those card stores and have an essay on them. But cases are spiking here, and some people just don’t want to be a part of the solution…so we’ll see. Otherwise it’ll be another trip down memory lane.

 

--JG

Where have you gone 1986? A ode to Topps, Fleer and Donruss...but not Sportflics.

 

Dimitri Danielopoulos stood there on my front porch, like a shroud, clad in his gray hoodie, his mess of curly hair matted down by the hood, the droplets of an early winter rain making darker spots on his clothing, holding a small stack of 1986 Topps cards, carefully wrapped in tight sandwich plastic, in his hands.

            How had he gotten them? 1986 baseball cards were brand new. They were spoken about but not seen. The Topps ones had yet to hit the shelves at the Thrift Drug; the Thrift Drug that continued to keep Football cards on their shelves like museum relics of the previous fall. What did we want with Football cards at that point? The Steelers had gone 7-9 that season, a lowly third place in the old AFC Central Division. It was time to move on. It was time for all of us to move on…to baseball. Not that the coming 1986 season for the Pittsburgh Pirates gave us anything to be hopeful about, even with the promise of a new manager in Jim Leyland, and the lurking specter of a young and almost ready for prime-time Barry Bonds. The Pirates were still going to suck in 1986. But the cards wouldn’t. They never failed us.

            Dimitri (D) was somewhat of an interloper with us kids. Someone we were still feeling out. In the years before he’d been an enemy of sorts. The one rich kid on Pennoak Drive and Pennoak Manor (my little dead end cul de sac offshoot street), who lived in a big home at the end of the block, instead of inside the duplex homes that the rest of us called home. D was the bad boy who’d chosen to hang out with the ruffians on Dauntless Street, rather than us, his street-mates. The kid with the TP and silly string on Devil’s night. A short speedster who helped Dauntless beat us at wiffle ball and Nerf football; the kid always forever in my memory making a high jump rounding our makeshift third base, the wiffle ball just missing him and sailing into the Fanello’s yard, to score the winning run.

Then D suddenly dropped his so-called hoodlum friends, and started hanging more with us. Who knew why? Some said it was his mom who made him straighten out. Some said D did it on his own. Regardless, he started showing up to play ball with our crew, or showing up at our home unannounced with cards or just to hang out. He became our fast weapon rounding the bases. The little guy no one defended on third and long, ripe for a Hail Mary, if the ball didn’t get caught in the trees. But parents were still skeptical of him. D was bad news. That had been their initial impression. Stay away from him. And we did and we didn’t for as long as we could. But kids in my neighborhood were slaves to two things: sports and sports cards.

D was awash in baseball cards. He had a collection of cards dating from the mid-60s to late 70s that rendered us other kids speechless. Clemente, Mays, Aaron. He had them all from that golden era. D had Mickey Mantle cards for Christ’s sake. What thirteen-year-old kid had Mickey Mantle cards in 1986? D did. And he always seemed to get the new cards first. He’d done so in 1985, so it was no surprise that he was standing at my door accomplishing that same feat in 1986. Not only did D’s family have money, he had an older brother who’d given D all of his baseball cards, the Mays, the Mickeys, et al, thus making him the Richie Rich of our card world.

And D had a hot seventeen-year-old sister, Annas. Long, black hair; olive-colored Mediterranean skin; infectious smile When Annas wasn’t spending her summer’s sunbathing in the yard, awakening the beast in us boys, she seemed to always be willing to drive her pampered little brother out to the card shops that littered the further suburbs. In an effort to prove his salt in the neighborhood, D invited some of us along. But there was no way in hell that my parents were letting eleven (almost twelve) year old me get in a car with a thirteen-year-old, a still untrustworthy one at that, and his sixteen-year-old sister, to go galivanting out to a card shop in a strip mall. Where I saw a bounty of new cards, my parents saw car accidents and my untimely death.

So I waited. On the chain drug stores to drag their lazy asses in putting the new cards on the shelves, or for D to show up at my door like he’d done that particular rainy, winter day. As I remember it, we went straight up to my room; me, D and my brother trailing. I remember D unwrapping the cards from the plastic, handing them to me, the edge in his voice warning to be careful, even though whatever he was bringing my way were probably triples, doubles at best, of what he already had stashed at home.

1986 Topps! Finally! And in my grubby hands! Going through the cards I was stuck by the black and white borders. A black border! Like 1971 Topps…only not really. But 1971 Topps was mythical, and when trading we always seemed to want someone’s cards from that year. Ah, but 1986 Topps. The bold, sharp, colorful team names across the top of the cards. The little circle in the left corner that told the player’s position. Names written in bold black ink on the bottom. That red, black and gray cardstock back to the card. A sharp card. No gimmicks. 1986 Topps were the best-looking cards I’d ever seen, I thought to myself. But didn’t I say that every year? In the recent past, hadn’t there been a rosy-faced, cherubic ten soon-to-be eleven-year-old gushing over 1985 Topps in that same way?

I especially wanted this card:

Say what you will about Vince Coleman now. The attitude. The downfall in New York. The infamous firecracker. But at the start of the 1986 season he was the coolest ballplayer to me, the heir apparent to the base stealing of Rickey Henderson. Sure, he’d had a card in the 1985 Traded Set. But I was always a base set man.

D knew what he was doing in bringing those 1986 Topps cards to my home. He knew how deficient and needy I was. An easy mark when met with something new and shiny. I was like that crow in the Secret of NIMH, hunting for the sparkly

D knew he could walk out of my room having bilked me out of a few cards that he wanted (It surprised me that I even HAD cards that he wanted), for a small stack of commons and minor stars that I’d have ten times over by June, simply because they were hot off the press. And he was right. I’d trade away value for the new, and D would leave my home contented and grinning. I’d have bragging rights at school for a week or so. Then the new cards would be on the shelves everywhere, and I’d be doing nothing but cursing him under my breath while counting my losses.

1986 seemed to be the year where cards exploded at home and at school. Everyone seemed to be collecting. It wasn’t just us geeks who traded cards and baseball stickers at recess. Now kids who didn’t look like they collected at all had cards. The jocks had cards. Not content with monopolizing sports and gym, and the budding affections of twelve-year-old girls, these guys has to muscle in on our territory with their stacks of cards and binders. We all carried card binders. Budding capitalists with small portfolios of our best cards to show off our worth. Even Rick Glavin, who was a burn-out bully before we really knew who burn-outs were (he had longish hair, listened to metal), brought in a stack of cards to trade via fist on face coercion. We traded wherever and whenever. It seemed like almost daily one of us kids were getting our cards taken away by an annoyed and exasperated teacher, during a secret trade in English or Math class.

While I preferred Topps, I didn’t even think it was the best set of that year, once I got an eyeful (via D of course) of what Donruss and Fleer were doing. Topps had no Jose Canseco rookie card in their base 792 card set. Ah, the blessed ever-loving Donruss Jose Canseco card! The cardboard gold that turned us all into rank capitalists that year…if you could pull one or afford one raw at a flea market or card show. And if you could you were the man.

1986 Donruss was…okay. It had that slanted, blue border design with those millions of lines. I’d give it a very close third place. But for my money it would’ve been Fleer that had the best-looking card that year. Fleer with its thick, navy blue borders, fat team logos and big swath of color encasing the player’s name in position. Even the yellow, black and white backs were sharp. They were Pittsburgh Pirate colored! They had a Jose Canseco rookie card in their set too, if you didn’t mind him sharing it with Eric Plunk.

That was if you could even get Fleer or Donruss cards in my neighborhood. In 1986 the usual card buying route of Thrift Drug (Topps), Revco (Fleer) and Statlander Pharmacy (Donruss) had done us dirty in what they’d ordered for the 1986 season. Thrift still carried Topps, but Revco and Statlander had betrayed and abandoned us with the other two brands. They carried Topps as well now. Was this a conspiracy? What had once been a free-flowing capitalist market for cards had suddenly turned into a monopoly by one brand. Okay, one normal brand.

They all also carried Sportflics. Goddamned Sportflics. 

I hated Sportflics with a passion unparalleled. I hated Sportflics as I hated all Montagues. Sportflics with its head shots of the players morphing into wannabe in-motion shots, when you tilted the card. The trick hardly worked. Plus, you couldn’t really see a Sportflics image so well outside in the light of day, where so many of us kids were forced to do our business by parents who claimed being outdoors was somehow beneficial to us. Sportflics with its weird, cushiony backs to the cards. Sportflics that sat there on the shelves at Revco and Stalander where my Fleer and Donruss wax boxes should’ve been.  You know who liked Sportflics? Those news kids who’d just gotten into the hobby that year. They liked Sportflics.

For me, it was to hell with Sportflics. And a plague upon its house! And to hell with Revco and Statlander for selling out their individuality, and becoming another run-of-the-mill shill for The Real One. And I say this as a Topps man. To hell with them for keeping me from getting that Canseco rookie card. Either of them.

But good ol’ Dimitri Danielopoulos had the Cansecos. He had doubles…of both the Fleer and the Donruss rookie card. That greedy little monster with his hot sister and her license to drive! It took me until Christmas and a gift of the now-classic 1986 Topps Traded set to get my first Canseco rookie card. 

But by then it was to hell with Jose Canseco. There was a new sheriff in town vying for my affection.

 

As well as these guys

I didn’t fail at getting the Fleer or Donruss Canseco without trying. Sometimes the world leaves a desperate and focused child no choice. It was later in the summer, back when there was an actual August cool that could turn one’s attention from the laziness of days free to the eventual workman-like vibe of the coming fall. School would be starting (a week earlier for us Catholic kids), and we’d already replaced the wiffle balls with the Nerf footballs. The shelves at the Thirft drug had evolved from baseball to the 1986 Topps football cards sitting on its shelf. The times they were a’changing.

I was hanging out at D’s house, looking through cards, as usual. Annas was there somewhere, inside, because it was too cool to sunbathe. D brought up going to this card store he went to deeper in the suburbs. TNT Collectibles it was called. Hell, I still remember the store’s front sign that used Roberto Clemente’s profile photo from his 1955 Topps card. He asked me if I wanted to go. He had to know what my answer would be. It would be the same as always. No. Or I wasn’t allowed. But D was slicker than I was. He said we’d be gone maybe an hour or so. And wasn’t I given permission to be at his house all day? What was one hour out of the whole day? After all of that denial that had stunted me, I couldn’t argue with that logic.

It was the coolest ride of my life, heading out to TNT. We weren’t going anywhere I hadn’t been before. But the path seemed different under my newly defiant eyes. Route 22 seemed wider, more open and welcoming. D sat up front with Annas and I sat in the back. She played Top 40 radio, unlike the radio in my car set to WWWS and the oldies from the 1950s and 60s. We sang along to Steve Winwood. Higher Love was a huge hit that summer and seemed to always be playing. Annas stuck her arm out the driver’s side window, and let it wave in the breeze. The breeze that sent her perfume wafting back to me. When we pulled into the lot at TNT, she opened up a pack of cigarettes, lit herself a smoke, and told us boys to have fun.

TNT was the first time that I’d ever been in a collectibles shop that was solely framed around sports cards and sports card memorabilia. It was a small store front; three display cases and shelving behind that held countless boxes of cards. There were game used bats resting on slats, and old Pirates and Steelers pennants tacked to the walls. They had game used jerseys in frames. One that was worn by Terry Bradshaw. One that was worn by Dave Parker. The price tags on the items was beyond any money I’d ever see for a long time.

D went looking through the bins of start cards while I continued to be starstruck. I had to shake myself out of it. This was heaven. This was Mecca. I could die in TNT and be eternally at peaceful rest. In the distance on the shelves sat those long-sought after packs of 1986 Fleer and Donruss. The Canseco would be my destiny. I need only ask the suspicious looking gentleman smoking a cigarette and watching afternoon game shows on a small color TV. Then it all would be mine. Victory! Glory! Triumph! Not having to settle for a pack of goddamned Sportflics! TNT collectibles would be my shining moment. My Xanadu, my…Noooooooooooooooooo…

….in all of my excitement…I forgot to run home and bring any money with me.

            Skunked again as they say.

Lastly...on Wednesday Night I was invited and appeared on the sports card podcast, About the Cards, to discuss the essay about returning to collecting that I'd written for Kristofer Collins' Pittsburgh Book Review. You here see the podcast HERE. It was a wonferful experience and I was thankful for the opportunity. Hosts Tim Shepler, Stephan Loeffler and Ben Wilson do About the Cards every Wednesday at 8PM PST (10 Central). All three hosts are a class act, and they made this guy feel very welcome beforehand and during the show. If I can describe About the Cards it's like sitting back with your well-informed buddies and discussing sports and the hobby of sports card collecting. Thank you gentlemen once again.

 

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

 

Next Friday:  I’m going to take a small break from the childhood stories (have to preserve them), to take a look at the few places I go to locally to buy cards, in the wake of there not being many card stores left. And maybe I’ll show you what I bought.

 

--JG

1974 Topps Baseball, My Birth Year Set : a Story of Sadness...and Growth?

For the record I am not a thief or a crook, or generally a dishonest person.

I’ve been known to spin a yarn here and there. Tell a white lie to get out of a social engagement because I’m about as introverted as one can get; let’s just say I’m not the kind of guy starving for human contact, even during a pandemic. I’ve told long tales to leave another person just baffled enough by me not to bother. I’ve stretched the truth to save someone their dignity and pride. I fine dine on mendaciousness when need be, but never overeat.

And I’ve pilfered a little bit. Mostly from corporations. Mostly small things. A cassette tape. A Robin the Boy Wonder action figure from a Hills Department Store; it was already out of the box so it wasn’t any good to anyone anyway, though the theft still resulted in my getting grounded for a week (note to any budding thieves: a Velcro Pittsburgh Pirates wallet is not a good place to stuff a stolen action figure). And as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve stolen a pack of cards here and there from the Thrift Drug or the Revco, when I was a moneyless kid in need of a carboard, gum and wax fix. Raw capitalism affects us all, my friends.

But I’ve never done the desperate yet conniving used car salesman act the way that I did on Rick Stanton back in 1984.

When I got back into card collecting in the summer of 2019 it was with the intent to both build complete sets of the cards (primarily Topps) that I enjoyed growing up. My main collecting years of 1984-1992. I also wanted to build a pretty decent PC (personal collection) of the stars and Hall of Famers I enjoyed during my collecting era. I had it in mind that I would build the current base sets for Topps and the yearly Heritage sets (I’ve since gone back on building Heritage, which I’ll explain in a future post), as well as create a simultaneous PC of some of today’s brightest and upcoming stars. I quickly expanded my set building goal by adding the years 1980-1983, as the very first pack I ever opened was a 1980 Topps pack. I figured why not just go full circle.

The Sets:

The PC of old stars and HOFers:

The thing is I’d never really been able to build complete sets when I was a kid. The discipline wasn’t there. Neither was the money. I was always more interested in opening packs and pulling out whatever star cards were in them, putting said cards in penny sleeves or top loaders, and into a box I had for those cards. The same with going to card shows. Why spend my money riffling through boxes of common cards, break my back for some bloody checklist, when I could spend the paperboy money on cards of the players that I wanted? Also, the idea of taking the time collating sets just wasn’t my cup of tea. I broke up Traded Sets for the cards I wanted personally. I was Veruca Salt with cards. I wanted them now! The only set that I ever built was the 1988 Topps Baseball set. And that’s only because they were so damned plentiful it happened by accident.

The adult collector in me found set building more appealing. Building sets gave me a chance to sit down with the cards, look through them, re-engage with the hobby and the sport of baseball; realize there’s no such thing as a common card when only approximately 19,000 players have made the major leagues since 1871. I found that I really enjoyed collating the cards and building up the sets. Set building was calming and relieved the anxiety that was always bubbling up wanting me to drown. The adult collector in me was essentially the exact opposite of the inpatient boy back in the 1980s, who just wanted to flash his Wade Boggs and Don Mattingly bling to his friends. Though I now have some new Boggs and Mattingly bling.

With wax boxes from my era being relatively cheap and plentiful still thanks to overproduction, and places like ComC and Sportlots available to me to buy single cards, I was able to build sets pretty quickly. To date I’ve built 1986-1992 Topps, 2019 and 2020 Topps, and am a stone’s throw away from finishing 1984, 1985 (the bulk of the sets bought at an LCS because those wax boxes are too rich for my blood) and 2018 Topps, as well as 1987 and 1988 Donruss. I’ve purchased complete sets of 1982 and 1983 Topps, and at some point, I said to myself that I was going to get those 1980 and 1981 Topps sets going too.

But then distraction set it in the form of 1974 Topps.

Getting back into the hobby meant also re-engaging with people within the hobby. I started following a lot of collectors on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. I paid attention as they detailed their collecting needs or their new quests; cheered them on as they got their cards in the mail and showed them off online. A lot of collectors were looking back, collecting sets that may have been out of reach to them when they were kids. One thing that I found very interesting were the number of collectors collecting the set of their birth year. It seemed an obvious task, yet one that I found intriguing.

I always liked my birth year cards: 1974 Topps. I loved the white boarders with the pennant flags at the top and bottom of the card, listening the city and team name. Thought the colorful band that framed the players quite artful. Considered those green and gray card stock backs tasteful and alluring. I loved how the 1974 set was full of stars. Players in their prime in the 1970s, Like Nolan Ryan and Mike Schmidt. Guys from the sixties like Pete Rose and Willie Stargell, Frank Robinson and good ol’ Brooks. How it had the rookie cards of Dave Winfield, and two guys whom I loved as a kid in Pittsburgh: Bill Madlock and the Cobra; Dave Parker.

1974 Topps seemed like a classy set to add to my collection building. My birth year! A commemoration of me! So, I printed up a 1974 checklist at my job, and got to building in my still naïve way. I wasn’t as concerned with condition as a lot of other collectors. Not that I wanted beat-up junk. But a rounded corner here and there…it didn’t matter so much to me. I went through the checklist and found a core of players I liked, players I wanted to PC as well, and then I went to ComC and found versions of those cards that I could afford. I figured then I’d find people online who were selling lots of card, so I could round up some of those “common” cards needed for the set. It seemed a perfect plan. A perfect goal. Some cardboard therapy and fun. What could go wrong?

Some of the cards I bought: 

Then Rick Stanton showed up in my head, living rent free, and screwed the whole thing up.

Again…I stress…that I am not a thief or a crook or generally a dishonest person.

As I remember it anyway, it was just a small group of us kids trading cards at Phineas’ 8^th birthday party, back in that long, gone summer of 1984. By small I mean it was me, Phineas (ignoring his party guests in the way that baseball cards will do that to a cardboard addict) and my brother. I use the word trading lightly. Mostly it was me, the ten-year-old, supposedly older and wiser than the others, throwing down precious card after card from my modestly, rebuilt (a post for another time) collection, trying to get the ever-stubborn Phineas to complete a trade. Hell, I don’t even remember what card it was that I wanted so badly.

Phineas was a known card trading procrastinator. The kind of kid who’d sit back and contemplate the loss of a minor star card from his collection, even if he had three of the goddamned things to spare. He was bad at eight and would get worse as he aged. Phineas turned a simple trade into a goddamned Vida Blue/Charlie O. Finley contract negotiation each and every single time, until frustration bloomed on the other kid's end, and the whole deal was off. In retrospect, his stubbornness was a good thing. Phineas saved me the loss of a lot of good cards thrown down in fatigue and exasperation.

“What are you guys doing?” Rick Stanton said, coming over to the round, glass table. A child’s version of a gambling den, really. An Umbrella to create a dark mood. Scattered bowls of pretzels and chips; stained Kool-Aid cups; untouched bowls of fruit.

“Trading cards,” I said, not paying him much mind, and probably throwing down another lost gem.

“I have cards at home.”

The phrase struck me. I lifted my head up and gave Rick a good look. “What do you have?”

“A box of cards,” he said. “They were my dad’s.”

I lit up inside. Dad’s? A gift from dad? Dad cards. That meant older cards. That meant Mays. Aaron. Roberto Clemente. Surely this kid was sitting on a Micky Mantle or two. “Well, go and get them,” I said.

Rick showed up back to the party not ten minutes later with an 800-count box of cards. There weren’t any Mantle or Clemente or Mays cards inside. But there was a Hank Aaron. In fact, it was the first card in the box. What Rick had brought to the table was a complete set of 1974 Topps cards. The thick white boarders. The pennant flags. The colorful frame around the player photos. An anxious warmth raged in me. Sweat dampened my brow. I looked at Rick and his wide, innocent, I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-I-don’t-know-what-I-have bright blue eyes, and it was to hell with Phineas and his procrastination. I got Rick a seat at the table. I used my age and my weight and I muscled up next to him. And I subsequently ripped him the hell off for everything good that he had.

It wasn’t hard. Rick truly didn’t know what he had, and he didn’t know what I was offering. A 1983 Fleer Willie Stargell for his 1974 card. Why have a 1974 Stargell, Rick, when you could have his last card? A 1984 Pete Rose for his 1974 card. Because this is Rose with the Phillies, Rick! The Philadelphia Phillies. It went on and on like that. A ’74 Bench for his ’84 Fleer. Again, his last card Rick. I did the same with a ’74 Yaz for his ’83 Donruss. I took Rick’s Frank Robinson card for a Frank Robinson manager card. Got his Nolan Ryan. Got his Reggie. Got his Rod Carew, Lou Brock and Bob Gibson too. Snatched the Cobra rookie for a Diamond King. I left no stone unturned. And the only reason the carnage ended at all was because Phineas went and told on me to his mom. Not because I was ripping Rick off, but because I’d shut Phineas out of the whole operation. Why sit there and watch such procrastination when I could get myself a 1974 Joe Morgan for his 1984 Topps one.

Yeah, I got in trouble. Phineas’ mom scolded and shamed me. My mom and Phineas’ mom had been friends since they were teenagers. Phineas was more a cousin to me than a friend. I’d called his parents “aunt” and “uncle” until I realized how family structures actually worked. It was like being scolded by my mom, which was still coming. I was made to sit in Phineas’ living room alone while the party raged on outside, waiting for my mom to pick me and my brother up after work. Double trouble. But what did my humiliation really matter when I had all of that 1974 bounty, received by trading away cards I could still get inside of current packs, or for a few found dimes at the American Coin?

I suppose this is what mattered. Rick didn’t just get the cards from his dad as a gift. His dad was dead. I can’t remember from what. But he died before Rick was even two years old. The kid never knew his old man. He just had things like pictures to remember him by. Maybe heirlooms hanging around the house. Or a baseball card set. A 1974 Topps set that his father had hand collated the year Rick’s sister, June, was born. Her birth year. A commemoration of her. Maybe he’d been too sick to hand collate anything the year Rick was born.

I’d forgotten that memory. Until my order of those 1974 Topps baseball cards showed up in my mail slot. And then the memories came flooding back to me. The shame. The guilt. The foolishness. I mean I know I was just a kid…but still. I knew what I was doing. I’d had it done to me. And I would again. It went without saying that a ten-year-old with a stack of 1974 Topps stars didn’t stand a chance with the older collectors in his neighborhood. I traded away nearly everything that I ripped off of Rick Stanton. I didn’t even keep that ’74 Wille Stargell card. Gone. All of it. Who knew if Rick knew how I’d ripped him off? The last time I saw him we were both pumping gas back in 1992. Rick waved. I nodded. We went our separate ways.

So now I have this small stack of 1974 cards. It’s a good thing I’m PCing most of the players that I bought. A 1974 Reggie Jackson doesn’t hold the same profound memory when it’s just placed in a box next to his 1975 and 1976 card. Still, the guilt lingers with the 1974 set. I don’t know if I have the gumption to build it. Or maybe I should. As some kind of card collector’s penance. Devote my time and money to rebuilding that set. But we were kids, right? And collecting should be fun. There’s always the 1974 Topps Football set to build if I want a birth year set. I always liked those cards. The goal post borders. The close-up shots. The team name in a bold block letters at the bottom. Those, sharp black All-Pro cards. I could build that set!

But…see…there was this kid named Andy…and in 1986, he’d just inherited a bunch of  old football cards from his uncle and…

 

…that’s my story on 1974 Topps Baseball cards.

 

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

Next Friday:  I discuss the 1986 Topps baseball card set. Why it meant the world to me back then. Why it doesn’t mean that much to me now