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

Buying Baseball Cards --- Then

 

We could see it in the distance.

            The side profile of our nation’s first president, George Washington, his regal pointed nose illuminated angelic, by the sunshine reflecting off of the wide, glass doors of the east wing of the Monroeville Mall. It beckoned come hither. And we did. One of us shouting, run! And then we took off down the hallway like sprinters in the 100-yard dash, our boy limbs moving as fast as we could. Me, always the fat kid, always trailing the others. Watching, helplessly, as my brother and our friends reached the store front of the American Coin collectibles shop first, not even waiting for me to catch up, before they disappeared inside.

My mother always shouting for us to slow down, for us all to just slow down. My mother. It was always my mother. She seemed to be the only parent willing to take our pack of sweating, stinking, pre-teen boys out to the Monroeville Mall, even though she never understood why we collected cards. What are you going to do with those? I couldn’t answer her at twelve, and I can’t answer her now at forty-six. Love them? Cherish them? But mom was gracious enough to sit there outside the shop, on a bench, gazing up a that huge Washington quarter sign that marked our paradise, bored and counting out the minutes of our half-hour allotment, years before the internet and cell phones, a hallway littered with the dregs of the mall’s storefronts (a crappy diner, a nail salon, a tuxedo shop, a collectibles store), so that she couldn’t even really people watch; all so that we could go to the “Coin,” as well called it, to spend our allowance, birthday, holiday, and found-under-the-couch-cushion money, on ever-loving baseball cards.

And the American Coin was our paradise. Run by men who still wore suits and ties, proper salesman, whose ode to rare coinage, had been taken half-over by display cases full of bubblegum cards so that they could keep afloat during this zeitgeist. There were Henry Aaron and Willie Mays cards. A Pete Rose rookie we swooned over. There were cards of our, tragic, sainted Pittsburgh hero Roberto Clemente; a giant whose legendary tales our fathers still told with the moony eyes of children in awe. The American coin had men who sat on stools, chain-smoking cigarettes, begrudgingly rising off of their posts every few minutes, in order to fetch us another bin full of star cards, or to answer the ubiquitous question: how much is this?

How they must’ve watched us, bemusedly, as we excitedly leafed through the names of Hall of Famers! Grubby kids counting the coins in our hands, the crumpled bills in balls in our pockets, hoping our jackpots could land one of us a ’74 Reggie:

a ’76 Rose

a beat-to-death but still desirous ’68 Frank Robinson

But, in the end, still satisfied with an ’81 Stargell, a Pirates team set, a few packs of current wax, something else, something else, as time ran out, as we waited for my mother to poke her head into the ‘Coin, saying, boys, boys; just finding that one last gem, Mattingly, Ripken, Rickey! Whatever satisfied the cardboard beast that raged within us. Until the next time we came to the Monroeville Mall, someone shouted run, and we again raced down that long, bright hall.

If the American Coin was our Xanadu, then the local drug store was the meat and potatoes of our daily card collecting operation. They were where we bought our packs on the regular…and maybe even pilfered a pack or so every once in a while, (I’m 1985 Fleer cello pack guilty), when there was no cash flow. The very first wax box of cards that I ever bought, the classically, masterful 1987 Topps, I bought off the shelf at a Thrift Drug, not at a card show or hobby shop. Maybe it seems strange now, maybe it doesn’t, but during my heyday of collecting in the mid to late 80’s and early 90’s, you could just as easily find packs of Topps, Fleer and Donruss, on the shelves at your local chain drug store, as you can now in the aisles of Target or Wal-Mart (could before this year, I know). And not for nothing, us kids stood outside waiting for those places to open as well.

On any summer day us neighborhood kids could scrape some coin together and have ourselves a collecting field day going from chain to chain, and even a few mom and pop pharmacies along the way, buying packs of cards, eating the stale gum, and discarding the wax wrapper onto the pavement like the eco-damaging deviants we were back then. Thrift Drug was the place for Topps. Revco took care of our Fleer needs. If we were feeling dangerous and edgy, we took the longer walk, risking life and limb, crossing where Frankstown Road met Beulah Road in a blur of ever-speeding cars and the ghosts of legendary auto accidents, never telling our parents that was came anywhere near that hellscape, so that we could go to Statlander Drugs, where packs of Donruss mingled on the confectionary shelves with our daily sustenance of Milky Ways and Snickers bars, and packs of Garbage Pail Kids.

It was from those drug store wax pack adventures that I got my first McGwire, my first Bonds, my first Bo Jackson cards. Where the sets and personal collections were truly built. Where us kids could gauge the seasons, as the shelves that held our baseball cards turned to wax packs of football cards in the fall. Then it was collecting Marino, Montana, and Elway until the new baseball boxes arrived at the tail end of the year, like a promise for a baseball season yet to come. It was on a solo trip to Thrift Drug on a gray cold, mid spring day where I pulled my blessed 1987 Topps Bobby Bonilla rookie card; my lone, ecstatic cheer, echoing off of the Ritzland plaza strip mall buildings, as I cradled the card the whole walk home, praying that it wouldn’t rain.

And need I not forget the flea markets and card show. The Saturday and Sunday mornings that my brother and I begged the old man to drive us out to City Limits, to the indoor flea market, him clutching the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette or Sunday Press, trying to read the news of the world, until he couldn’t stand our whining anymore and he relented. City Limits with its tables of card dealers littered amidst the people selling the detritus of their lives for a small profit. Heavy-set caterpillar moustache men who smelled of coffee, cigarettes, and the sugar from a quickly eaten doughnut; weekend entrepreneurs selling off their childhood to a new generation. Breaking new wax so that they could sell us the star cards that we were unable to pull, but only at a premium. Because it all was going to make us rich.

I remember one Sunday in the summer of 1989, a dealer at City Limit selling a freshly pulled Upper Desk Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Desk rookie card for twenty bucks. The paper boy money burning a hole in my pocket. How I kept going back to his table, and then back again. My brother looking on to see just what I’d do. Until my old man, bored from his hour perusing war memorabilia and other nick knacks, found us, the car keys already in his hands saying let’s go. But dad…but dad…I pointed at the Griffey. Ever the frugal man, he saw the price tag and rolled his eyes at me. Telling me, you’re nuts, but it’s your money. Then he walked away toward the parking lot. And I didn’t buy the card. I still don’t have an Upper Deck Griffey Jr. to this day. 

Card shows back then felt like festivals. I’m sure they still do now. In Pittsburgh, we didn’t have many small ones. But every few months a card show came to the Expo Mart in Monroeville (think convention center…but in the suburbs), and it was like being in la-la land. Hundreds of dealers. A maze of tables selling not only cards, but memorabilia and ephemera like hats, pennants, jerseys, signed bats and signed balls. There was a stand to buy a hot dog, some popcorn, or a coke. Card shows were a far cry from the American Coin and couch-cushion money. We saved for those bad boys. Paper route money. Chore money. Whatever it took to feel like a wealthy swinger rolling into the Expo Mart with a fad wad of cash to spend on cards. 

And I don’t want to forget about the autographs. Big card shows meant big names, from baseball’s glorious past to the present, signing cards, baseballs (only on the sweet spot please), glossy photos, and other ephemera. I had a friend who once had Andy Van Slyke sign a cookie jar! For my money, I’ve stood in line to meet and have items signed by: Willie Stargell, Willie Mays, and Ferguson Jenkins. I bought a certified autographed Hank Aaron baseball, and wish to god one day I get the chance to meet him. Even my old man felt like a boy again that time he got to shake Brooks Robinson’s hand, as he was signing stuff for me and my brother. When this pandemic is over, one of the first events I want to go to is a big, old card show.

But right now…times are hard…and frustrating…and sad. I sit here this morning writing this, thinking about the past, perusing Comc and Sportlots (some online ways to buy cards), ruminating over the good old days of buying baseball cards, building up my sets, listening to people outside walking their dogs, the pant of joggers as they run past, children talking exuberantly to their parents, the sound of cars rushing up and down the street, their tires sloshing in the rain. And I think; this sounds like normal life. At times alone it feels like normal life. Seven months on and I still catch myself leaving the apartment without a mask. But as of this writing there have been 492, 026 Covid-19 infections in the last seven days, and the United States is sitting on almost 226,000 deaths. Just last week I learned that a former co-worker of mine, a mentor actually, when I got my first supervisory job, had died of the coronavirus. Going to a card show seems a long way off. Hell, just walking down the street like a normal person does.

Maybe that’s why I got to thinking the way that I was, you know, about the past. The good old days that weren’t always good, but, in retrospect, sometimes seem like they were the greatest time to be alive. Like I mention all of these stores and card shows, and flea markets to try and boost myself out of this year’s malaise. Forget this pandemic for a moment. Forget that goddamned election. Eschew Twitter and its nonsense for a moment or two. But my mind’s eye neglected to mention the time my mother hauled me out of a card shop because I had a temper tantrum inside.

A twelve-year-old boy and I threw a fit. All because the guy who owned the shop (a jewelry store in a Penn Hills strip mall that he half-converted into sports cards to make a buck) refused to continue giving me boxes of cards to sift through. Because he’d had enough of me asking, for this and for that, and simply shook his head no. The American Coin this was not. The budding capitalist in me couldn’t comprehend his weariness and outright refusal. I had cash and he had cards. So I had at him. And then my mother when she interceded…well, I yelled at her and pouted too. A petulant boy to say the least. I got dragged out of the store; the cards I’d already selected remaining in a pile on his display case. I spent the ride home crying while my brother and friends looked through their bounty. My fit cost me a week of grounding. Whatever. The place was a no good jip-joint anyway.

Who wants to remember that baseball card memory?

Nah, instead I’d rather think of the excited kid racing up the escalator at the Monroeville Mall, with his friends, walking quickly along the bright corridors of the second floor, weaving past the shoppers buying such trivialities as clothing and shoes. I want to feel that anticipation as we headed toward that final hallway. The left turn that you made at the half-empty stinking idea of diner that had become forgotten by the mall’s new food court full of Taco Bell, Sbarro Pizza, and the heavenly scent of Potato Patch fries. I want to bask in the light shining distantly through those big, glass East Entrance, Dawn of the Dead doors. Try to make out George Washington’s sun-soaked visage. Feel the sweat in the palm of my hand. Imagine what cardboard treasures I’d be walking out with that day. Waiting, waiting, for whichever one of us was going to do it. Look at the others in a pose, or already in a sprint (the damned, lousy cheater) shouting for us to go. To RUN.

 

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

 

Next Friday:  I discuss why it’s painful for me to considering compiling my birthyear set: the beautiful, classy, 1974 Topps Baseball Card set.

 

--JG

a beginning

On Friday, October 30th, I'm going to post my first blog post about buying baseball cards back in the 1980s and early 1990s. But for today here's a link via The Pittsburgh Book Review to the very first baseball card essay I wrote. Hope you like. And I plan on posting here every Friday...for as long as the writing and the memories hold up.  

Opening Day: One Anxious Man's Return to His Childhood Hobby