Examining the outer fringes of sanity

As you know, I've recently announced that I want to gather as many 1975 Topps buyback cards as possible. If there's a whole set of them, then, yes, that's my ultimate goal, but I'm going into this fully expecting to fall way short of an entire set of '75 buybacks.

This recent pursuit has caused me to ponder how many other '75-related quests I could chase, if, you know, I was insane.

First, let's cover what I've already completed in the 1975 Topps world. I've already completed the full base set, represented by Bob Boone up there. I finished that off in 2004, I believe.

I've also completed the full 660-card mini parallel set. I finished that just last year, and the 9-year-old in me still hasn't calmed down from that.

And, of course, the current mission: seek out whatever '75 buybacks I can. So far, I have a whopping four cards.

Now onto the '75 quests if I had lost touch with my senses:

1975 O-Pee-Chee set

This is the most reasonable of tasks, but one that doesn't interest me much. Except for the way that O-Pee-Chee cut its cards back then (the ragged borders) and the semi-saturated coloring on some of the cards, '75 O-Pee-Chee looks identical to Topps on the front. French on the back isn't enough to make me pursue a set that I didn't even know existed when I was a kid in the '70s.

I have about 15-20 O-Pee-Chee cards from 1975, and I'm still mad at half of them because I picked them during my attempt to complete the '75 base set, not realizing that they were OPC.

Meanwhile, I don't turn away '75 OPC, but I'll never try to complete this.

1975 autographed set

No chance of doing this even if I wanted to do it. More than 70 players from this set have passed on, so I'd have to monitor ebay constantly for rare cases of autographed '75s from Gary Carter, Dave May, Mike Cuellar and the like. Also, a few players in the set (Bob Moose, Danny Thompson) died long ago. And one player -- Don Wilson -- died before the cards hit packs. So this completion quest is impossible.

By the way, I have three autographed cards from this set so far.

1975 miscut set

This is even more whimsical than trying to complete a buyback set. But although I like a good miscut card as much as the next collector, my brain would probably revolt over a binder full of '75 miscuts. I have maybe five severely miscut '75s. I don't have any plans to add any more.

So that's strike three on any other insane '75 completion tasks.

Since the '75 set is so dear to my heart, I see myself dabbling in the set pretty much for the rest of my collecting life. Outside of buybacks and upgrading the cards I already have, I have been accumulating some of the many tributes to 1975 Topps here and there.

I'll address a post to that in the near future.

The '75 legacy lives on forever.