A Giant Project: Update #3

I worked hard on my 1964 Topps Giants set during the past two weeks.  I am posting five new cards tonight, which includes three Hall of Famers and a great of the era.  Really happy with how well this project is going.  

Here are the new cards, saving the better cards for later in the post.  

I did not know much about Max Alvis outside of seeing the occasional card of him in common boxes at card shows.  First, he went to the University of Texas and was a two sport star at the school with the football and baseball teams.  More impressive was the fact that he played both fullback and linebacker on the football team.  A two-way player and he started at both positions.  Alvis choose to play baseball.  He was a good young player with the Indians, but ended up getting spinal meningitis during the 1964 season.  

He stuck around for a few more seasons, but was never the same player.  Alvis made the 1967 American League All-Star team.  He was not having a particularly good season, but the Indians traded Rocky Colavito and Alvis was the most popular player remaining on the team.  

Next.  

Boyer is not a Hall of Famer, but is definitely a great from the 1960s.  Boyer probably has a much better case than most people would think.  Boyer's uniform number, 14, is the retired by the Cardinals.  The only non-Hall of Famer with a retired number with the Cardinals.  Boyer was the National League MVP in 1964 and helped the Cardinals get to the World Series against the Yankees.  Boyer hit a Game 4 Grand Slam, which was the turning point in the Series, and added another in Game 7 that put the game out of reach.  

I am not sure where Topps got the 10 number from on the back of the card.  Boyer appeared in seven All-Star games at this point in his career.  I guess they could be including Minor League All-Star games too, although Boyer was not in the Minors very long.  He rose quickly and also spent time with the Army during the Korean War.  

This is the part of the post that I am most excited about.  There are a lot of Hall Famers on the 1964 Topps Giants checklist and I have quite a few of them left to find.  Some are going to be harder than others.   Bunning was an easy Hall of Famer to find and not very expensive.  The right corner, near his forearm, has a slight scratch, but it's only on the surface.  

I like the back of Bunning's card.  Some of the newspaper headlines on the back of the cards feel like a bit of a stretch.  Max Alvis has a fancy headline about leading a last place team in home runs and then meanders into him playing in the Pacific Coast League.  Bunning has a perfect game on the back of his card.  If I recall the details correctly, the perfect game was thrown on Father's Day and Jim Bunning had a Philip Rivers amount of children.  

They also mention the fact that Bunning threw a no-hitter for the Tigers.  Solid work here pairing an accomplishment with another good accomplishment.  Nice that Topps stayed on topic here.  Sometimes they drift.....

Another Hall of Famer, a little bit better than Jim Bunning.  Just my opinion.  This is a nice portrait style photo on the front of the card, but I really like the back of Marichal's card.  

The super-high leg kick was Marichal's claim to fame while he was playing.   The Topps Giants cards do not have action photographs on the fronts of the cards.  They really missed out here.  If I ran a card company in the 1960s, every Juan Marichal card would have a picture of his leg kick.  I also like that Topps gives him a headline for his no-hitter against the Astros in 1963, but it goes downhill after the picture and headline.  

Remember at the bottom of Jim Bunning when I mentioned drifting card backs?  

I am a little puzzled why they spent half of the back talking about where he played in the Minor Leagues. It's Juan Marichal.  Won a lot of games, struck out a lot of batters, crazy leg kick?   Do we need to know about how he pitched in Tacoma or the Eastern League?  Could we have squeezed another sentence out of 25 wins or 248 strikeouts? Talk about the leg kick.    

Last card of the post.  

This is a big one off the checklist.

I will let the card do the talking.  

A little wear along the left edge on the front of the card, but otherwise this is in really good shape.  Not nearly as painful as I had imagined it was going to be.  

Updated checklist.  19 out of the 60 cards.  

1 Gary Peters
2 Ken Johnson
3 Sandy Koufax SP
4 Bob Bailey
5 Milt Pappas
6 Ron Hunt
7 Whitey Ford
8 Roy McMillan
9 Rocky Colavito
10 Jim Bunning
11 Roberto Clemente
12 Al Kaline
13 Nellie Fox
14 Tony Gonzalez
15 Jim Gentile
16 Dean Chance
17 Dick Ellsworth
18 Jim Fregosi
19 Dick Groat
20 Chuck Hinton
21 Elston Howard
22 Dick Farrell
23 Albie Pearson
24 Frank Howard
25 Mickey Mantle
26 Joe Torre
27 Ed Brinkman
28 Bob Friend SP
29 Frank Robinson
30 Bill Freehan
31 Warren Spahn
32 Camilo Pascual
33 Pete Ward
34 Jim Maloney
35 Dave Wickersham
36 Johnny Callison
37 Juan Marichal
38 Harmon Killebrew
39 Luis Aparicio
40 Dick Radatz
41 Bob Gibson
42 Dick Stuart SP
43 Tommy Davis
44 Tony Oliva
45 Wayne Causey SP
46 Max Alvis
47 Galen Cisco SP
48 Carl Yastrzemski
49 Hank Aaron
50 Brooks Robinson
51 Willie Mays SP
52 Billy Williams
53 Juan Pizarro
54 Leon Wagner
55 Orlando Cepeda
56 Vada Pinson
57 Ken Boyer
58 Ron Santo
59 Johnny Romano
60 Bill Skowron SP

Antiquing

I made a trek to Missouri last week for the holidays.  I lived outside of St. Louis growing up, so I enjoy making return visits.  After spending the better part of the day in the car with a three year old, and a nine year old, there is no better feeling than driving the last few miles of Illinois and seeing the Arch. 

My parents actually no longer live outside of St. Louis, so it is now just a dinner stop before we drive two hours further west.  At some point on every trip we make time to do a few things around town.  

I used to always make stops at card shops in St. Louis, but those have dwindled since my favorite shop in South County has closed.  I am also pretty sure that my kids would riot if I made them sit in the car for 12 hours, and then took them to a card shop.  It would not be pretty.  

We spent the majority of our time in Columbia, Missouri.  If you are not familiar with Missouri, it is halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City, just north of Jefferson City.  The University of Missouri is there.  I toured the card shop scene in the town a few years back, and I just avoid it altogether when I go there.  There is also a Target, but it's in the mall.  It's a hot mess.  

Luckily, my parents like antiques, and my father spotted a bunch of baseball cards in one of the local antique malls.  I spent a little bit of time visiting one morning, and found some pretty good deals on some vintage cards.  If you are a Missourian, or nearby, it's the Veranda Antique Mall off of I-70.  

There were some non-vintage cards there too.  Plenty of junk wax era cards that were being sold in binders, football and basketball cards, and all sorts of other nicknacks.  This was the sweetest non-baseball card item that I found at the store.

I should have looked up my old Durham Bulls team sets to see how much the Steve Avery cards were worth back in 1989.  Probably a pretty penny.  Some other time.  

On to the cards.  

Again, I mainly checked out the vintage card boxes, which had a lot of 1960s and 1970s baseball cards.  Many of the cards were $1, a few were slightly more.  I think I spent a total of $25 in the store, and walked away with roughly half a dozen cards. 

Here is my haul.  I scanned both the fronts and backs of the cards.  

Curt Simmons.  Cardinal.  

Tommy Harper.  Seattle Pilots.  

Wilbur Wood.  White Sox.  Raleigh Capitals.  Strikeouts.  

Rich Nye.  Cardinal.  Bird expert.  

Walt Williams.  Durham Bull.  

Doug Rader.  Durham Bull.  Part of Bill McCool's card back.  

Gates Brown.  Durham Bull.  

Ron Santo.  Hall of Famer.  

Dave Kingman.  Strikeouts.  

Mickey Lolich.  Strikeouts.  

Ken Singleton.  Durham Bull.  Actually, Raleigh-Durham Met.  

Jim Bunning.  Hall of Famer.  

Mickey Lolich.  Durham Bull.  

Harmon Killebrew.  Hall of Famer.  

This was a pretty good haul.  

Archives Base Set

Last Archives post until I end up trading for a bunch of cool autographs of guys who played 20 years ago.  Until then I will do a little bit on the base set.  Like the recent additions of the Archives sets, this year's set is based on three previous set designs: 1957, 1976, and 1983.  I am a little bit partial towards the 1983 design, but that was the first year that I collected baseball cards and I love that set.  A lot.

The 1957 design is also a favorite too.  It's really simple, but sometimes simplicity is a good thing.  Topps has always done a really good job of getting the details correct on the remakes in Archives.  It's cool to see players from a different era like Ken Griffey Jr. and Cal Ripken pop up on this classic Topps design.  Topps also used this card design in the 2006 Topps Heritage set, so it was the second go around for players like Ken Griffey and Jorge Posada, but at least Topps changed up their pictures and did not rehash something from a past set.  

I am not a huge fan of the 1976 set.  It's before my time and I am not sure there is a card in that set I ever felt like I had to own.  I picked up an Eckersley somewhere along the line, but it was not a priority.  I like this Goldschmidt card because people should like Goldschmidt right now.  The most bizarre card in the set appears in the 1976 section of the set......

That Khris Davis card is clearly a picture of Carlos Gomez.  Topps had a card similar to this in the Heritage set with a picture of Shelby Miller on a card of Lance Lynn.  It could just be an editing, quality control, type of issue.  Imagine that, or maybe it's somehow intentional.  Pretty sure it could be part of the Ginter Code.  The answer this year is........

and we are finally to my favorite part of the set.  As mentioned before I love this set and was really happy with how these look.  Except that looks like a familiar Mike Schmidt picture..... Colors and borders from the cards match the cards from the 1983 set, but the Rays cards with the yellow writing is a little bit hard to look at.  I understand that Topps is taking a little bit of creative liberty with the design on the teams that did not exist at the time the set was made, but yellow print is really a good thing.