With this post, I am getting dangerously close to a "when I was your age I used to walk to and from school uphill both ways" lecture. But it's the only way I can think of to convey how much I enjoy cards like this '68 Topps Jeff Torborg.When I was a kid, there were no boxes to bust, no card stores to visit, no way to send away for cards, and certainly no internet. The best and only way to get baseball cards was to visit your neighborhood drug store. And, yeah, I did walk there most of the time.
Cards were hard to come by, even though they were around 10 cents a pack when I first started collecting. The occasions -- and they were truly occasions -- when I received cards were so seldom that I remember each and every one to this day. I remember which store, I remember how many packs. I even remember some of the cards that came from the packs.
I didn't accumulate many cards over an entire year. Collecting the whole set was out of the question. I couldn't afford it. No one I knew could. In fact it wasn't even a thought until I got older.
So there were a lot of cards in each set during the 1970s that I never saw until I collected them as an adult. Doubles were a foreign concept. The first year I collected, in 1975, I didn't receive a single double. That's partly because of how few cards I bought and also because lousy collation hadn't been invented yet. At least not the way we know it now.
The same goes for 1976. I think in '77 I might have accumulated five doubles. In 1978 I was introduced to the idea of "triples." By 1980, my first attempt to collect an entire set, duplicates and I were fast friends. But before then, if I saw someone with doubles of a certain card, I thought they were the luckiest person on earth. An older brother of a friend of mine had a bunch of 1969 cards, including several duplicates. I looked at them like I had just spotted a three-headed spider monkey.
So, that's where I'm coming from when I mention these 1968 Topps Dodgers cards that I received from Steve of Wait 'Til Next Year. I have most of the '68 Dodgers, so a lot of these are doubles. But doubles of 1960s cards remains such a new idea to me that I get giddy when I put them next to my older '68 cards. My brain screams, "Look, there's TWO of them." My mind is blown.
So, let's look at some of these wonderful cards (which are all in better shape than the ones I already had).
Bill Singer is featuring something you don't see much in these days of profitable ball clubs: a holey sweatshirt. Singer got into some trouble a few years ago over racist and sexist comments he made to Dodgers assistant general manager Kim Ng and was let go by the Mets (Singer blamed it on being drunk and the Atkins diet). But Singer is now working for the Nationals, and, interestingly, coordinating scouting for the team's Pacific Rim operations.
Here's Paul Popovich, trying to disguise his Cubs uniform. He was traded from the Cubs to the Dodgers on Nov. 30, 1967. Topps was so surprised by the move that they forgot to change the cartoon on the back of the card.
On the '68 cards, each cartoon was associated with the player's team. If the player was listed with the Dodgers, then the cartoon was about the Dodgers. But this cartoon is about the Cubs.
Out of all the cards I received from Steve, this is the one that is markedly better than the one I have already. My first Fairly is majorly off-center. It was kind of unsettling when I received it in the mail because I ordered it from a major national card supplier. I usually get better results than that.
This is a card I DIDN'T have already. Acquiring card No. 228 has been on my "to-do" list for a long time. Now I can cross it off. All that's left for me to collect of the '68 Dodgers are two high-numbered cards (Alston and Parker).
Lastly, here's a 1966 Topps card of Ron Fairly, also a needed card. Steve has already sent me a '66 Al Ferrara card, so he must have a few '66 Dodgers. Perhaps even a Drysdale? Hmmm.Thanks, Steve. I really, really appreciate these cards. And the 10-year-old in me appreciates them even more.
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