A couple of 1977 O-Pee-Chee Blue Jays

I’ve mentioned before (I believe) that I’m collecting those 1977 O-Pee-Chee Baseball cards which are significantly different from their Topps counterparts… here are a couple I’d bought recently.  These cards would’ve blown my mind in 1977;  For a young baseball fan, 1977 was the first expansion I’d witnessed first hand, but all the Blue Jays and Mariners in the 1977 set were airbrushed into their new unis.  Looking back, it would’ve been a nice opportunity for Topps to have done something like the Traded set they’d done just the year before.  But you know what they say about hindsight…

As it worked out, 1977 OPC is like a traded set because they went to press later than Topps and – unlike the previous years – dared to make significant changes to a number of cards, especially for the Expos and Blue Jays.

Both of these cards were instances where an airbrushed Topps photo was replaced with a Spring Training photo.  Here are the Topps counterparts:

Jim Mason was drafted 30th overall from the Yankees, and Dave Lemanczyk was drafted 43rd from the Tigers.

If you want to know more about 1977 O-Pee-Chee and other O-Pee-Chee cards which differed from their Topps counterparts, go check out Oh, My O-Pee-Chee.