A little over a month ago I went to a regional card show… now, in an ideal world I would’ve bought a weekend pass and spent much of my Saturday and Sunday there. For a number of reasons, I was limited to just the one day, and about 3 hours in total… which might seem like plenty to you, but it’s a pretty good sized show and I only get to go once or twice a year, so 3 hours isn’t much.
On top of that, my favorite dealer, who has a very fun bargain vintage box, wasn’t there. I didn’t achieve the goals I went in with, but I still did OK, because I found two different dealers with 1970 and 1971 Topps Super Baseball cards!
I got enough Super cards that I decided to split them into two posts; this time around it’ll be cards from the 42-card 1970 set, starting with Tigers 30-game winner Denny McLain:
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Supers, they were issued for two years and are roughly double the size of a standard baseball (3 1/8″ x 5 1/4″). They’re also many times the thickness of a regular baseball card, which makes them feel substantial in your hand. They were sold in wax packs that – if I remember correctly – contained 3 cards and a stick of bubble gum for the price of 10 cents.
The backs were largely identical to the same player’s standard-sized cards, but with a different card number and spaced a little differently.
Since these cards are oversized, they’re not everybody’s cup of tea… but I love oversized cards, and the dealers at this show were selling these Supers for a buck or two each. As you would expect for that price, none of them are candidates to be sent into a grading service, and there weren’t any Roberto Clemente or Willie Mays cards, but for $1 or $2 a pop, I will buy these all day.
It takes a giant-sized card to feature 6’7″ Frank Howard! I wonder if he was bigger relative to the players of his day than Aaron Judge is to current players… I mean, shortstops were still short back then…
Ron Santo shows off the Cubbies sleeve patch in use at the time (one which needs to be brought back).
Tony Oliva strikes a pose… In 1970 Oliva was nearing the end of a string of 8 consecutive All-Star appearances, starting with his 1964 A.L. Rookie Of The Year season.
The recently departed Willie McCovey, who at the time was coming off his MVP 1969 season. In that season, Stretch accomplished something you don’t see these days: In addition to leading the league in homers (45) and RBI (126), he also lead the league with a .453 on-base percentage. Sure, that was aided by a league-leading 45 intentional walks, but he also struck out just 66 times. Sixty-six! It’s too much for me to take in… Oh my, I do believe I’m getting the vapors.
Bill Freehan might only get appreciated by Tigers fans these days, but he was an 11-time All-Star, 5-time Gold Glove winner and a 1968 World Champion.
The card is not missing the lower-left-hand corner; that was a scanning issue that I didn’t catch until I was writing this post, and by then it would’ve been too much hassle to rescan. I hope you can forgive me.
Wrapping up with Carl Yastrzemski posing in the Yankee Stadium batting cage. Yaz was just a couple of years removed from winning the Triple Crown in 1967 and like McCovey he also lead the league in OBP while leading the league in traditional power stats.
These cards, like the 1970 Topps Super Football set, are casual pursuits for me; I’m content to just acquire them as I run across them, and maybe some point in the future I’ll turn it into a full-blown set chase.