Batting .400

I am far enough along in my mission to collect one buyback version of every card in the 1975 Topps set that I keep seeing the same '75 buybacks available.

People sometimes offer me spare '75 buybacks they have lying around -- because really, what's anyone going to do with one of those fiendish stamped cards -- and I have to tell them I have them already.

There are still plenty out there that I don't have, which is reassuring in a weird way, but I still am surprised when I see a '75 buyback available that I don't already own.

This happened recently when Commish Bob of Five Tool Collector and Talking Heads and Horizontal Heroes and '59 Topps (gee, I thought I had a lot of blogs) sent me a picture of a few '75 buybacks he had. "Need any of 'em?" he asked.

I looked and thought, surely I owned these. A couple were favorites from back when I was a kid. Had to have nabbed those already.

But after double-checking my want list, it turns out I needed all three! A miracle! I think that was the highlight of my entire week.

So Jim Nettles above and these two guys below ...

... were added to my '75 buyback quest. The Foucault and Ontiveros bring me right back to 1975 and all the collecting memories associated with that year. The Steve Foucault card single-handedly made me a Rangers fan that year. (P.S., yes that's Jerry Reuss in the background of the Ontiveros card).

That bumped my buyback total to 262 cards. This is significant because it brought me to .39696969697 percent of the set.

That's 40 percent rounded off to the nearest hundredth.

It's not batting .400 though. The best you could do with that figure is be batting .397. That's pretty damn good, but it's not .400.

Fortunately, not long after Commish Bob's cards arrived, some other '75 buybacks became available on Twitter. In fact, Brian of Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary turned me on to them. Tim of Big Shep's Cards was offering them up.

I took a look at the four cards available and I needed two of them! Weee!

Those two cards arrived just the other day:

I love 1975 Topps so much.

So with these two cards my total is 264 from the set in buyback form.

264 into 660 cards is ...

... exactly ...

😲😲😲😲

.4

or, .400.

I am batting .400 on the nose with the 1975 Topps buyback set.

We are in rarified Ted Williams, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, George Sisler air here.

So let's keep going!

(P.S.: A few other cards from Commish Bob: