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OK, so it's actually not a card



I tried to start this post on the new "mobile-friendly" Blogger that is coming our way, like it or not, very soon.

I didn't do very well.

So if you see my posts dwindle down to once a week near the end of June, you'll know why.

Anyway ...

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I purchased a 1977 Topps Venezuelan card after an emailed head's up from a blog reader, Mike. I was so excited to come across a Cey card that I didn't have that I ordered the card directly through my email on my phone, without bothering to change the name notation.

That explains why an envelope from someone I had never communicated with before came addressed to "Night Owl". I wonder if the seller thought, "what's up with this guy?"

When the card arrived, I knew right away that it wasn't a card.

It was a sticker.


That's it right there. You can see the differences between the Venezuelan sticker and the actually 1977 Topps card. The Cey sticker doesn't have a bottom border. It also lists the set number -- 171 -- on the front of the sticker.

There's another difference, too:



The sticker is much shorter than the American Topps card.

It turns out that Venezuelan cards were a thing until about 1972 and then much of the cards were replaced by stickers during the 1970s.

I didn't know that. But now I know that most of the Venezuelan items that look like the '77 Topps set are actually stickers. The '77 Venezuelans are weird in that winter league players are combined with major league players in one set. The winter league players get their own design while the MLBers are mostly on the '77 Topps design. Oh, and some of the winter league players are actually cards, not stickers . Confused? Yup, me, too.

The sticker itself is paper-thin, quite flimsy.

The back is blank, because, duh, it's a sticker.

Apparently sticker albums were available and the spots where the stickers were to be stuck contained text about the individual player. The stickers were glued on the back at only the top, so once the sticker was stuck, the collector could lift up the sticker from the bottom and read the text.

It's not a card, but it's quite the novelty item and I'm thrilled to own it.

And you better believe I'll be adding it to my list of Ron Cey CARDS.

Comments

Captain Canuck said…
LOVE stickers.

My Scooby Doo lunchbox is covered in them.
Didn't know that. That's the second thing I've learned just tonight. LOL.
acrackedbat said…
I say "stick it" all the time. It's a nice carry-over from the 70s.
It amazes me that things like this survived for over 40 years. Very cool novelty item.
Nick said…
I didn't know Venezuelans were still issued this late in the game. I thought they were strictly a '60s/early '70s thing. Very cool!
Big League said…
I have a Mike Scott Venezuelan card/sticker.
Fuji said…
I've never heard of or seen one of these Venezuelan stickers before. Very interesting stuff. Also very interested in seeing these changes to Blogger. I've never been a huge fan of change.
GCA said…
Wow, the Ven cards are scarce enough, and there are stickers too?

I caved and swapped over to the new Blogger version too. It's OK, but was frustrating learning the new editing interface. Seems like they removed more than they improved. You can't load all your pictures for a post at once. The drag 'em here interface is useless to me. And I don't like that I can't just click on the number and see the comments at the end of the published post. Now you have to view and scroll down manually. And the "phone view" is irrelevant to reality as well. Rant over.
gregory said…
Quite an interactive card/sticker/pop-up/sticker book!

I'm not a big fan of the new Blogger interface either, but a lot of bloggers have been sending feedback (myself included), and hopefully the folks in charge will make some tweaks for us.
AdamE said…
My first Virdon Venezuelan was a 1972 Sticker. The design was nothing like a 1972 Topps so I had no idea what it was. Luckily Cardboard Junkie knew what it was right away.
One other interesting change to the stickers... 1977 Topps has a black box around the photo, some white space and then an "outer box" which also runs through the drop shadow behind the position pennant. For some reason - maybe because of the bottom of the card/sticker being missing - they removed that outer box... but with mixed results, as you can see by looking closely at the bottom of the pennant.

This late after the post, few are likely to see this comment, but I wanted to throw it out there anyway.
Very informative. Now I'm curious about the album.