Washington Wednesday: R.I.P. Wes "Mr. Bullet" Unseld

R.I.P. WES UNSELD 1946-2020

On Tuesday 02 June of this year 2020 while doing my daily routine of checking out the main page of TCDB (Trading Card Database) for the random card of the day, new forum posts, born on today and then finally In Memoriam I saw the image of a familiar RC. (I don't have the card but am familiar with it). That of perhaps the most iconic Washington Basketball Player of All-Time Wes Unseld. I was beyond shocked another of my childhood sports idols passed from this Earth. I think it was during the years between his playing career (1981) to his coaching career (1988) that I drifted away from being a basketball fan and would eventually stop caring about the sport until a few years ago. Plus I was more attached to football at the time, as the Washington Senators were long gone, and the Washington Capitals were not very good yet.

1969-70 Topps Basketball: 56 Wes Unseld Baltimore Bullets

Image from comc.com

OK so his rookie card was when the Bullets were still the Baltimore Bullets, but the man would play his entire career with the Bullets Franchise, work with the front office and then later return to the court as Head Coach. He then moved onto General Manager for the team on into the transition to the name change to Wizards and a few years after that.

Here are some (but not all) of my Unseld Cards as a tribute to one of my childhood Icons. For the most part I have already shown these cards on this blog sometime previously so I don't need to explain them.

The following items are a few gems in my collection:

Next is a "card" in my collection that is more of a mini poster than a real "card" it is from 1969-70 Topps and they call it a "ruler" it is only 10 inches by 2.5 inches so not a true ruler but hey it is only paper. I got it from Ebay I think some years back for I forget how much I might have mentioned where and when some posts back a few years back.

1969-70 Topps Basketball Ruler: 22 Wes Unseld Baltimore Bullets

Finally here is a photo of an item I have from my childhood, the photo is actually from an image search I did a few years back and from someone's Ebay auction for which they had I think the whole set was listed for of course way too much money. I forget if they sold or not. Anyway as I said this is something that I actually have but not my copy in the image (I haven't scanned or photographed mine). It is a mini poster that was available from McDonald's in 1976. The size is 12" x 16" One of those premium things during the basketball season that year. Each week they featured a new poster that had two caricatures of Washington Bullets players. There are a total of 4 mini posters. This is the one with Wes and K.C. Jones.

1976 McDonald's Washington Bullets mini poster: K.C. Jones and Wes Unseld

Washington Wednesday: A Couple of Unseld Autos

 Washington Wednesday: A Couple of Unseld Autos

It seems like there is always a long time between my Washington Wednesday posts. I should fix that. Hmm when was that Last one? You can click that link to find out. Moving On!

In this episode I will actually mention and show the cards that I briefly blogged about on my Kirk's Knook blog to make my self appointed minimum monthly posting quota way back in April of last year 2017. What I mentioned cards over there? And in APRIL? LAST YEAR? Egads Man PROCRASTINATE MUCH?

On Friday 21 April 2017 as part of my mail day one of the two packages contained an Ebay BIN single card $4.90 + $3.25 Shipping. Bidding had started at only $1.99 but got dangerously close to my max bid of $5.00. Was it a shill? I don't think so, but sometimes when I win auctions very close to or at my max bid I do wonder.

So here it that beaut:

 2015-16 Panini Excalibur Basketball: Regal Endorsements Autograph:

RE-WUN Wes Unseld Bullets on sticker blue sharpie #d 135/200

Then that following Wednesday 26 April 2017 on a single package mail day coming from Ebay. A BIN auction for a single card $1.99 + $4.99 shipping. Short story with this one that I first posted on my regular blog (Kirk's Knook Blog as linked at the beginning of this post). It was mainly a rant about ordering from Ebay without checking out the seller and where they were located. Which was why I posted it on that blog. I knee-jerk bought the card without seeing where it was coming from. It was from a dealer in China. Sometimes that means you will get some kind of counterfeit product. Original tracking information said it would arrive sometime between early May to early June. Fortunately it arrived well before the estimated date.

It was this beaut: Looks like a Dave Bing Cameo. I played some with the post-scanning photo editing to help bring out some of the features. I am far from a pro at it.

2015-16 Panini Threads Basketball: Century Signatures:

CS-WUN Wes Unseld Bullets on sticker autograph blue sharpie #d 137/199

The seller included 3 bonus cards: Fortunately all basketball. I like surprise bonus cards when it makes sense like these from the same sport, but I don’t like it when you order non-sports and they send sports or vice verse, or they send different sports than what you ordered. I like all (well most) sports but some people are just one sport collectors, or Non-Sport only.

2016-17 Panini Donruss Basketball: At first I thought these were special “gold” versions turns out the regular base has the gold/bronze coloring.

142 Marcin Gortat Wizards - Hey they sent the “same” team.

Yes Gortat was the subject of  the previous WW episode.

197 Tyrone Wallace Jazz

2016-17 Panini Select Basketball: Yes I did have to play with the post-scanning settings for this "chrome" card. I didn't realize until after the initial scan that the right side edge and some of the left side had some kind of smudged schmutz on it as shiny chrome cards tend to have if not wiped as soon as gotten and put into a penny sleeve. I wiped the card of the smudge but haven't sleeved it yet.

9 Zaza Pachulia Warriors

The Wallace and the Pachulia cards are of course up for trade.

Washington Wednesday: Wes Unseld Hall Monitor

WASHINGTON WEDNESDAY: Wes Unseld Hall Monitor

In early January of this year 2014. I bought this sweet shiny card from a fellow member form the TCC forums for just $5 delivered. A Wes Unseld Bullets card number 22 It is from the 2013 Panini Prizm Basketball set The "Hall Monitors" 25 card Hall of Fame Sub-Set. I might try for a partial rainbow of Wes Unseld but with two 1/1 "black parallels" (Black Prizm and Black Prizm Mosaic) a full rainbow is next to impossible. There are enough of the other colors to make even a partial rainbow hard. I might try to get the base cards (and maybe some parallel colors) of a few of the other players: Moses Malone, Earl Monroe. Not sure if I'll try for a full base set of this sub-set.

 2013 Panini Prizm Basketball: Hall Monitors 22 Wes Unseld Bullets

(Front and Back)

The 1969 Basketball Rule(r)

Friday 02 March 2012 I got one of those rare items that really is pretty rare from Ebay A 1969 Topps Basketball Ruler - 22 Wes Unseld Baltimore Bullets. I got it for a small steal of $9.99 + $3 shipping. I've seen a few of this one and some of the others in the set starting at much much more. These "rulers" are "cards" well really they are just strips of paper like the mini posters only these are 2.5" x 10". So they are one card wide and about an inch short of being 3 cards high. They were folded (3 folds) inserts packed into the regular card packs. They call them "rulers" because on the left-hand side of the front is ruled scale with a caricature drawing of the player portrayed. There are 23 in this set even though they are numbed to 24 (#5 was never issued, not even sure what/who it would have been).

 1969 Topps Basketball Ruler

22 Wes Unseld Baltimore Bullets

(Front and Back)

As you can see the back is blank. Just plain paper. The top fold there in the scan looks like it is in two pieces but it isn't.

It looks like there are two or three more of these things I want to get because of being a player who had played for the Bullets, plus there is the Lou Alcindor (AKA: Kareem Abdul Jabbar) heck maybe I'll chase the whole set since it is only 23, but the stars in the set go for mega bucks, so I might not ever have another one.

Bullets FourBall

From my sportlots onslaught part one which arrived on 11FEB2012. Here are four more of the Bullets cards I got. Brace yourselves folks because Thursday 16FEB2012 was a 10 package day and the results of some of that stuff will filter onto this blog sometime soon.

1979-80 TOPPS BASKETBALL

1979-80 Topps Basketball 18 Tom Henderson Bullets

Not much to say about this one. I don't recall Mr. Henderson.

1979-80 Topps Basketball 65 Wes Unseld Bullets

Looks like Mr. Unseld is swinging and getting some kind of groove on, maybe there is a Broadway musical there somewhere. Now the pose in this card is similar to the next card. I think I will do a separate post semi-in-depth comparison on these two cards sometime later.

1979-80 Topps Basketball 90 Elvin Hayes AS Bullets

As I said this card looks similar to Mr. Unseld's card from above. They both seem to be getting the rebound. Mr. Hayes seems to be fully planted where Mr. Unseld is in motion.

1979-80 Topps Basketball 103 Phil Chenier Bullets

My first reaction to this card was Mr. Chenier is waking funny. Upon further review it looks like he is actually running so it does sort of explain his weird walk.

1977-78 Bullets and a Rocket Boost

From the Ebay Bullets package I got on 11 Feb 2012. Here is a group of three cards from:

1977-78 TOPPS BASKETBALL

 

 1977-78 Topps Basketball - 40 Elvin Hayes - Bullets

OK so this card looks a little weird because Mr. Hayes appears to be slam dunking but his team-mate Mitch Kupchak appears to be walking on air? 

Bullets #25 Mitch Kupchak

Photo from Bullets/Wizards Alumni webpage

They must have lowered the basket or used a small kiddies basket that is only about 6 feet off the ground (Edit That can't be right either the players are 6 feet plus) instead of the standard 10 foot regulation height baskets in the arenas. I didn't notice that until I started commenting on this card in this post.

1977-78 Topps Basketball - 75 Wes Unseld - Bullets

The way Wes is leaning here it looks like he might end up on the floorboards. Anyway if I recall some of my childhood basketball memories correctly, despite starting to hate basketball sometime during the early 1980s, Mr Unseld was my favorite or one of my favorite Bullets players. I'm not sure where I have it but somewhere I have a mini poster circa 1976 from McDonalds of Wes and Coach 'K.C.' Jones from a series of mini posters they sold. The posters were one of the premiums that if you bought a certain sandwich (probably a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder) or "meal" you got the poster free, or you could buy the poster for $1.00 I think was the price. Each poster had 2 players pictured on them, there were 4 posters in the set. The "pictures" were caricatures of the players. I noticed someone on Ebay is selling the full set for $275.00 with $6 shipping.

1977-78 Topps Basketball - 124 Moses Malone - Rockets

OK so Mr. Malone is not a Bullet on this card, so why did I get a Non-Bullet card? It won't be until 1986 that he gets traded to DC. My collecting criteria for Basketball cards includes players that at one time in their careers played for the Bullets (Wizards not so much). If that wasn't the reason then the short easy excuse could be there are some Bullets pictured with him by sheer coincidence it happens to be the Two Bullets I have featured here and have their cards of Mr. Unseld and Mr. Hayes. How frackin' cool is that? It was totally unintended and again it wasn't until I was preparing this post that I even noticed the fact.

Bullets 1975-76 Topps: Chenier to Kozelco

1975-76 Topps Basketball Washington Bullets Cards Collage

 Back in the day 1975 to be exact I had gotten a few basketball cards from Topps for the 1975-76 NBA season. Fortunately I had gotten a couple of my Homie Team the Washington Bullets. I first became aware of them a few years before when they were the Baltimore Bullets. I think I started getting into them around '71 when they made their move, anyway I digress. It was around this time 1975 or 1976 when I attended my first Bullets Game of maybe 2 or 3 total in my life. I do recall their opponent was The New Orleans Jazz (years before they would move to Utah - UTAH? JAZZ?) I think the Bullets won. I'm not sure if that was the game that was the free T-Shirt Jersey game, or the School Safety Patrol discount game (maybe it was both). Anyway for the t-shirt game they gave away t-shirts that looked like the players jersey's. I wanted either Wes Unseld, or was it Phil Chenier I wanted? I ended up with Leonard Robinson. I don't think I have that shirt anymore, and never took a photo of me in it.

Of the basketball cards I had collected as a kid the 1975-76 Topps was one of the few I had gotten. My brother might of had some of the 74-75 Topps and definitely some of the tall boy 1970-71 cards.Once again I digress (you will notice I do that on this blog a lot. Shall we get on with the 1975-76 Bullets cards then?

1975-75 Topps Basketball  220 Washington Bullets Team Card

220 Washington Bullets: Team Card and checklist. I think I had this card back when I was a kid, not sure I only had 4 or 5 of the 12 cards in this team set. This card is an uncorrected error card, check out the back.

220 back of Team Card/Checklist Uncorrected Error

The uncorrected error on this card is that both the cards for Leonard Robinson and Wes Unseld are listed as card number 151. The correct number for the Wes Unseld card should be 115. The team card they talk about is the Team Leaders card Which I will get to at the end of my list.

1975-76 Topps Basketball - 190 Phil Chenier AS

190 Phil Chenier: This is one of the 4 or 5 cards I had when I was a kid. I always thought it was cool that of the few Bullets cards I had from this set it has been one of my favorites. I thought it was cool that he was on the All-Star team (2nd team).

1975-76 Topps Basketball - 173 Clem Haskins

173 Clem Haskins: Yep had this card as well. I didn't follow the team well enough to know much about how good a player Haskins was. I just had his card from this season.

1975-76 Topps Basketball - 60 Elvin Hayes

60 Elvin Hayes:  Don't think I had this one as a kid. I do however have a good maybe very good conditioned Elvin Hayes card from 1970-71 Topps #70 from when he was on the San Diego Rockets, it's warping dinged on the corners and some sides and a light crease at the bottom. I used to think it was in worse condition but I was confusing it with the 1976-77 #133card I have of his. That one has creases that look like lighting strikes and major corner bending falling apart. Someday I'll have to scan those. Both of them I've had since the day, the 1970-71 card was my brother's I'm fairly sure about that. This card is pretty well off center to the left and bottom, maybe I can do with an upgrade.

1975-76 Topps Basketball - 23 Jimmy Jones

23 Jimmy Jones: Didn't have this one. Don't have any stories about Jimmy I don't remember him from those days since I didn't wholeheartedly follow the Bullets even when I was following them. Sorry Mr.Jones. It's an OK action shot but for a card the image of him is pretty small.

1975-76 Topps Basketball - 202 Tom Kozelko

202 Tom Kozelko: Gesundheit, but seriously didn't have this card. He might have been the last card I got from sportlots for this set or was it Wes Unseld? My first thought was he looks awful scrawny and white to be a basketball player. He is another player I don't recall from those years. I should upgrade this card since it is soooooooooooo off center to the left and top (thus the back also has centering issues).

Bullets 1975-76 Topps: Porter to Weatherspoon

 

1975-76 Topps Washington Bullets cards set. Kevin Porter to Nick Weatherspoon.

1975-76 Topps Basketball 220 Washington Bullets Team Card Back

At first this will be weird if you are reading these as they get published. To keep the proper reading order I have scheduled their posting times in reverse order so that later while reading them in the archives they will appear in the proper order since blogs post newest posts first.

1975 -76 Topps Basketball - 79 Kevin Porter

79 Kevin Porter: I didn't have this card as a kid, but I remember Kevin Porter being a good player. The only thing I have to say is I should upgrade this card because the coloring on it is extremely red. It looks worse here online than in person, I just checked while drafting this post.

1975 - 76 Topps Basketball - 95 Mike Riordan

95 Mike Riordan: Didn't have this card and double heavy SIGH! I don't recall the player and this card has major off centering issues. Yes the bottom does cut off there at the white border thus the second part of the heavy sigh. Other than that a fairly nice card other than I think the reds are a bit pink. Maybe that should have been a triple sigh.

1975 - 76 Topps Basketball - 151 Leonard Robinson

151 Leonard Robinson: I think I had this card as a kid. I definitely remember Robinson I had a shirt with his number 33 on it after all. I'm pretty sure it was a game where School Safety Patrol Kids either got in free or had half-priced tickets or some such event as that. I definitely went on a t-shirt give-a-way night. I mention this in one of the other posts for this. The t-shirt was a replica of the jerseys except they were regular sleeved t-shirts they had the stripes on the front with Bullets and the player's number and then the back had their name and I think number again. I recall being a little disappointed in getting Robinson instead of Unseld or Chenier. OH by the way this card is correctly identified on the back of the team card.

1975 - 76 Topps Basketball - 115 Wes Unseld

115 Wes Unseld: Oddly enough one of my all-time fave Bullets I didn't have this card back then. Some where I think I still have a mini-poster that was a giveaway from McDonald's that has Wes Unseld and someone else from the team a coach I think. Well it isn't them on the poster it's caricatures of them. There were four? six? posters in the set and it had the major players in pairs on the posters. It was either a give-a-way with a specific purchase or it was an extra buck or two with a purchase. I forget the details and it's been a few years since I've seen one of them on Ebay but I think one was on there once maybe even the whole set. This card is mistakenly listed as being number 151 on the checklist on the back of the team card.

1975 - 76 Topps Basketball - 48 Nick Weatherspoon

48 Nick Weatherspoon: Another card I didn't have. Not sure I think it might have been the last one I got or the Unseld or Kozelko? I don't remember. I do remember Weatherspoon back then. Again I'm not sure of his stats but I think he was one of their better players.

1975 - 76 Topps Basketball - 133 Washington Bullets Team Leaders

133 Washington Bullets Team Leaders: Nope didn't have this card. Now I have two I don't remember exactly why I ended up with two. Probably because when I was finishing up the set I didn't think I had it so I quickly ordered a second one. Anyway one of them I think is slightly off center, maybe that was why?