The last three years in the hobby for me has been about making a more concerted effort to complete sets.
That's not sets that have been issued in the past year or even in the last five years. It's sets that I have long appreciated, over more than four decades in the hobby, that it's about time that I finish. This is where most of my love for the hobby lies, it's time to stop fooling around.
I've done very well at avoiding all the advertising come-ons and the "latest-and-greatest" bells & whistles over these few years and 2021 started much the same, with me completing several long-time coming sets (you'll see them in the year-end spectacular). Everything went well until around the end of September and then I hit a wall.
Most of the wall was created out of new-car-payment bills. There's nothing like a new bill to stifle new hobby purchases. But also, I've been trying to finish one particular set and it took me a couple months to get the last two cards.
The 1976 Hostess Willie Stargell card was caught up in a Sportslot order that I waited until I had enough money to request shipment and then I had to wait for the box shipment thingy to do its thingy.
The other card was the '76 Hostess Rod Carew. It's a short-print. That didn't mean anything much for me acquiring the other SPs in the set, so I figured it wouldn't be too challenging here. Through all this year and last year of picking up Hostess cards online, I saw plenty of Carew cards for sale. I just ignored them because the prices were a bit silly.
Then the Carews disappeared. Nothing. For weeks and weeks and weeks. Oh man, I should've grabbed that Carew in April! I set up a search for the card. Still nothing.
Then, just a couple of weeks ago, the first '76 Carew notification in a long time. It was part of an uncut Hostess box. So it was expensive, pretty much out of my price range. But I filed it away in case I got desperate.
Then not even a few days after that, a single Carew card popped up! Ebay sends these notifications at like 5 in the morning, and by the time I see them, I panic: somebody already grabbed it! But it was still there! And I grabbed it.
The message said it would arrive in time for Christmas. On Dec. 24. But it showed up five days early -- yesterday! It's a Christmas miracle!
And now my set is done.
This was a journey, which is something I never expected.
I kind of went into the quest unaware. I knew I loved the set and I knew it represented a magical time, when I was 10 years old and the country was celebrating its bicentennial and a card set out there actually matched the feeling of the time with a red-white-and-blue set! (As did Kellogg's -- yay for food issues!)
I knew that condition was an issue -- stains, kids' cutting habits -- and I would have to navigate that. But somehow I ignored that there were 150 cards in this set and I would have to gather all those while also trying to satisfy my condition standards! What was I thinking?
Now that it's done, it really feels like an accomplishment, which is the best part of set-collecting. But even more so than usual. Here is a look at the entire set in my binder.
There they all are. All the players I loved from my childhood (you get to a see a couple of '75s at the end as all my Hostess cards are in one binder at the moment).
None of those are cards are the exact same size and a few have some minor issues. But as I've said before, this set has character, it's not a cookie-cutter set and that's one of the reason why I like it, even if I try to avoid cards that look like they were ripped off the box.
Here is a review of some of the cards' condition:
These six all feature something that I supposedly am against -- stained cards.
The staining doesn't bother me too much as it avoids the player's face in each instance. Most of these cards are concentrated in one particular area of the set, cards 37-46, but none of them are short-prints, which is odd. Maybe I'll add upgrades, but I probably won't.
This is the only card in my set where a portion of the card is missing. Someone chomped off the bottom left corner. It doesn't bother me.
This bothers me a little, though, but I can't do anything about it as too many cards in my set are in this condition. The intent here I'm assuming was to get rid of any sign of dotted line on the cards. But I like the dotted lines and I think -- although whoever did a pretty good job here -- you're risking mucking up the actual card.
Here is what I like more -- when you cut completely around the dotted lines so you have a whole white border around your card. It looks neat, I can see the trademark dashes and they almost look like your traditional 2 1/2-by-3 1/2 cards. And, yes, I cut the Ryan card myself. Almost goofed on that one, too. It's not as easy as it looks.
I don't have a lot of stories about these cards. I will be forever grateful I found this Reggie Jackson card in wonderful shape at a card show. I think this is the card that made me realize I really could do this.
This set was issued during a time that I was barely aware of oddball cards. My first connection to Hostess came the following year, in 1977, when I'd spot these cards sitting underneath the Hostess cakes that my grandmother got out of the pantry closet for us.
But it's more about the time period and everything that was happening when I was that age.
This is the end of my '76 Hostess quest. I am not going to try to find the Twinkie versions with the black bars. I'm not going to find all the brown backs (my cards are a mix of black and brown backs).
I may try to find more panels from this set, but it's not a priority.
The next Hostess set I will pursue (although all of the other four are in my sites) is the '77 set as it features the first Hostess card I ever owned -- Davey Lopes.
But I think I'll take a bit of a break on Hostess cards as this quest took a bit out of me. Again, I ask, who was buying all those Hostess boxes back in the mid-70s?
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