Less temperamental

 

So, after experiencing a personal crisis with my all-time favorite oddball a couple of months ago, I took some action.

I removed all of my Kellogg's 3D cards from 1970-78 from their top loaders and placed each of them inside a shoebox in stacks. This, I hope, will limit the cracking that I saw with some of my top-loadered Kellogg's cards.

I kept the 1979-83 Kellogg's cards in their top loaders and upright in the same box where the '70-78 Kellogg's cards used to live. I haven't experienced any of the '79-83 cards cracking so I think they're safe.

Meanwhile, my Dodgers Kellogg's cards, all of them from 1970-83, are still in top loaders in their own stack. That's playing with fire, after I experienced the issues with the other Kellogg's cards in top loaders. But only one of the Dodgers cards has cracked, it's the 1970 Bill Singer card above. Oof.

The point is, I now have my Kellogg's cards in four different places, a shoebox for 70-78, another box for 79-83, a stack for the Dodgers and a binder that includes the '83 set and a bunch of cracked cards that I hope to one day upgrade.

But that's not going to happen anytime soon because I'm at a complete loss with my Kellogg's cards. I don't know if I want to track down anymore if they're just going to crack and especially at the prices they've been going for the last year-plus.

This is crushing. As I said, it's my favorite oddball of all-time. I HATE that the ones I have are now in four different places, I don't know if there's a solution.

It's too much to think about, and probably will be for months, maybe the whole year, so I'm starting to pivot to my second-favorite oddball set from the '70s, one I've written about many times before and one that is a lot less temperamental than the Kellogg's cards.

Hostess cards may have staining issues and cutting issues but they don't stain or rip by themselves. You have some kind of control over the cards. They may not be as "high tech" as Kellogg's cards were thought to be, but they're just as fun and a little more traditional in appreciating the photo on the card.

My third TCDB trade involved me sending some extra '75 Topps cards I had for four '70s Hostess needs. One of the cards was this 1975 Ron Carew. You can tell it is in fantastic shape. All the cards I received  from arby16 were.

The other three cards are from the 1977 Hostess set. Supposedly I'm trying to complete that next, although actually I'll take anything I don't have from '75, '77, '78 or '79.

It's very nice to get the Pete Rose card out of the way for '77. I may enjoy '70s oddballs more than a lot of collectors but I still have this attitude when superstars get pricey in oddballs. Come on! They're oddballs!

So, as I found out with the 1976 Hostess set, there's a long way to go before I complete any of the other Hostess sets. One of Kellogg's cards' benefits is none of the sets are larger than around 60 cards. Hostess sets balloon well past 100 and you've got to deal with some SPs.

But taking my time is fine because I want to have '70s cards to collect until I can't collect no more. And maybe during that long process I'll figure out what to do with Kellogg's cards again.