Al, Norm, Roger, and The Mick

Another day, another post that's starting off with Mr. Tiger (and company). For those of you at home keeping count, that's 3 out of the last 9 now.

Until recently, while finally making a real effort to clean out all of my old picture files chock full of never gotten to items for the blog, I had no idea how many of Al's cards that I was fortunate enough to get last year on COMC. I have been trying to sort everything into similar groups (usually by set), which means, in theory I could start off at least two more featuring Mr. Kaline, as there are still cards of his from '68 and '69 patiently waiting for a public showing.



This was a last second addition to the post, hence the terrible picture.

In the early days of this blog (back when no one was reading it yet), I mentioned that it was my coming across cheap 1972-73 basketball singles on Wensy (god, how I miss that site) in or around 2010, that brought me back to card collecting, which at that time, was only going to be vintage basketball.

But I have never mentioned, that it was the finding of a large amount (at least 100) of '67 & '72 Topps baseball in a dime box, at my first show at the Mall 205 (Portland) in over a decade, that led to me starting to collect baseball again as well. I really thought I would be further along with both of those sets by now, possibly even have them finished, but of course that was also before things got out of control, i.e. before I decided to start working on the insane amount of sets that I currently am.

Now we're getting to, what I consider to be one of my top five vintage baseball gets from last year. It seems like Topps must have started production on the '67 set, or at least the fist series, before Roger's trade to St. Louis, thankfully he didn't end up getting one of their hastily done airbrush treatments.

Considering the overall condition of the card itself, and knowing that it was his second to last, $10 in earned credit seemed like it was almost a steal of a price for this one.

As an aside, I saw a recent article in which Giancarlo Stanton mentioned that he considers Roger Maris' 61 home run's to still be the single season record, despite the fact that the records show three drugged up cheaters ahead of him. It was very refreshing to see a current big leaguer espouse such an opinion, as even if they believe it to be so, most guys usually wouldn't offer up that kind of "hot take" for public consumption. Kudos to him for being willing to do so.

Even if it's just a card featuring his disembodied head, it's always nice to check a Mantle off the list. I may look to replace this one for a non-partially checked/erased version at some point, as of now though, I'm just glad to have this one.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.