The incredible impact of the 1979 George Foster card

 

There are some cards that can only be appreciated -- truly appreciated -- by collectors who grew up in a specific period of time, maybe within only half a decade.

 

For instance, consider the 1979 Topps George Foster card, which many collectors my age have. If you are one of the legions of collectors who started with the 1987 Topps set or maybe the late '90s, or on the other end, in the 1960s or early 1970s, you can't appreciate the sizeable impact this card had on us.

 

In 1979, I didn't know a card without a logo on the helmet or hat. Logos were always there -- even if they were drawn on by Topps -- they were there. This was the period of Necessary Team Logos. I didn't know the time in the late '60s/early '70s when Topps would cover the offending hat logo with some black ink. I didn't know the 1970 Milton Bradley set. Conversely, I didn't grow up in the mid-to-late '80s, when unlicensed sets and empty hats re-emerged with oddballs from Burger King and True Value. 

The only blank hats I was aware of -- and only vaguely -- were the various disc sets, and, heck, they were barely cards!

 

Mostly, the only cards I knew were Topps -- fully licensed -- and Kellogg's and Hostess, also licensed. And then -- bam -- this card of probably the most famous slugger at the time, an All-Star and fresh off a 52-home run season appears in a helmet with NOTHING ON IT.

 

What is this??

 

I speculated. Wait ... we speculated. Because here's a letter to the editor from like five years later:

 

It had been bothering him for that long. It bothered me for a long time, too, maybe not quite that long, but for most of 1979, sure.

 

What did it mean? Was George Foster going to be traded after an MVP season?? Was it some sort of protest? It seemed so wrong -- an All-Star card for goodness sake -- with a blank helmet? That shouldn't happen.

 

 

It was extra-perplexing because Foster's appearances on the leaders cards that year showed him with a helmet with the Reds' wishbone 'C', per usual. I didn't like it, and, yes, given my affection for All-Star cards from this time, it's still one of my least favorite of the era.

 

Now, after seeing skads and skads of unlicensed cards issued over the past 15-plus years, and all of those food-issue cards from the '80s and early '90s, I'm much more familiar with them and they are no longer unusual as they were in my formative collecting years. In fact, I now consider the 1979 Topps George Foster as one of the greatest -- if not the greatest -- Licensed Card That Looks Like a Non-Licensed Card.

 

At some point after seeing the George Foster card, I later came across his teammate Junior Kennedy's card. I don't know if it was the same year, it was probably in the next couple of years. I didn't complete the 1979 set that year, maybe accumulating my usual approximate 300 cards.

 

 

Kennedy is also wearing a blank helmet. Maybe the same helmet? Was this a prank the Reds were playing on the Topps photographer? Anyway, if I had pulled the Kennedy card around the same time I saw the Foster card, maybe I wouldn't have been quite so confused.

 

Foster was a huge deal in the late 1970s as any kid on the playground could tell you then. He left such an impact that even today he is one of the few players who did not play for the Dodgers for which I have both an autograph card and a relic card.

 

I have no idea if there is another non-Dodger in that same category. But it says something that I do know that about Foster.

So that's why that 1979 Topps card was such a massive deal. I didn't start buying more packs to find a variation with Foster wearing a helmet with a logo. We weren't quite at that stage yet --but the Bump Wills card was that very same year ...