“Rainbow Friday”: Because Nothing Is Black When You’ve Got 1972’s

Yes, I’ve still got more COMC “Black Friday” goodies to share with you.  Today I’ve got several 1972 Topps cards that were on my “complete series 3 and 4” wantlist.

I guess they could be considered “Red Friday” cards… it’s funny, since only one of the cards actually says “Reds” on it, it wasn’t until I saw them here in this post that I’d realized that three of the four were Cincinnati Reds… and it looks to me like all three of those photos were taken at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.

Frank Howard has a red cap, but it’s a Senators cap masquerading as a cap of the newly-relocated Texas Rangers.  Now that I think of it, it’s interesting that even the hi # Rangers cards feature airbrushed hats.

Post-Halloween, State Of The Collection & Some Fairfield Repack Cards

We gave away baseball cards for Halloween again this year.  It’s something we’ve been doing for a number of years… If you’d like more details about what we do, you can see the post I wrote last year here.

This year, we gave away 20 homemade packs of 28 cards each, for a total of 560 cards. It’s fun to give out cards for Halloween… The kids enjoy it, they get some decent cards – I make sure every pack has at least two household names in it – and I get unwanted cards out of the house.  Winners all around.

Lesson learned this year:  Putting the All-Star cards from Topps Update on the top of each “pack” just confuses the kids who are trying to pick as best they can within 5 seconds.  I could have a stack of cards of Robinson Cano and Derek Jeter in American League BP jerseys, and they’ll ask “Excuse me, do you have any Yankees?”

As long as I’m talking about getting cards out of the house, I feel obligated to do a “weigh-in”, something I haven’t done in 9 months.  Posting my progress in organizing & purging helps with both motivation (if I do well) and guilt (if I don’t).  I used to do these weekly, then I told myself I’d do them monthly, then I told myself I’d do them quarterly.  You can see how much I listen to myself.

Just so I don’t publish an image-free post, I’ve scattered some completely unrelated Fairfield repack acquisitions among my stats.

Net change in the collection since 2/3/13: -448  (2,505 added, 2,953 purged – I need to step up the purging)

Total # of cards purged from the collection to date: 6,447

Net change to the # of cards in the house since 2/3: -4,268  (4,642 in, 8,910 out)

Total # of cards which have left the house to date: 22,598  (It’s sobering every time I update this number, because it seems like it must be a small fraction of what I actually have)

Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 47,022  (up from 20,418… and the organization continues…)

Number of cards that make up the complete sets in my Access database: 14,558  (meaning a total of 61,580 “confirmed” cards in my collection)

The Funny Hats Of ’76!!!!

Yesterday’s post was about America’s bicentennial in 1976.  Something else that happened in 1976 was the National League’s Centennial.  Several teams observed the Centennial in ways which people confused for observing the Bicentennial.

Of course, everybody knows the Pirates wore funny hats…

The Cardinals wore funny hats almost as much as the Pirates…

…and did the Pirates one better by wearing funny helmets to match their funny hats…

…The National League All-Stars wore funny hats (but not during the game)…

…The Mets wore funny hats (but not much, and the only image I could find in my collection was this shot from 1976’s Old Timers’ Day: This is Don Cardwell and Sal Maglie)…

The Reds and Phillies and NL umpires also wore funny hats, but I couldn’t find any decent images of them.

…and every team, funny hat or no funny hat, wore a “National League Centennial” patch like Manny Mota has.

Everybody but the Pirates would abandon the funny hats after the season.  The following year the Pirates would add funny uniforms to go with the funny hats, and would continue to wear those up through the mid-1980’s.

1979 Hostess Dave Concepción

There’s so much to love about this card… The obvious non-game situation, the photo tilted so that Shea seems about to slip into Flushing Bay, the name-on-back stretching from one armpit to the other.

In 1979, the year this Hostess card is from, Dave won a Gold Glove and was an All-Star, batting .281 and getting 84 RBI while playing shortstop.  The Reds went 90-71 and won the NL West, but got swept in the NLCS by the “We Are Family” Pirates.

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It’s Sunday, and time for Weigh-In #40

Numbers for this week:

Cards coming into the house: 25

Cards leaving the house:  0

Cards entering the collection: 54

Cards leaving the collection: 0

Cards moving from inbound to outbound without entering the collection: 21

To date:

Net change in the collection:  28

Net change to the # of cards in the house: -9,247

Total # of cards which have left the house: 12,810

Number of cards tracked in my Access database:  1,773