Material gain

 

Take a look at this 1977 Topps Bobby Murcer card. Notice anything different?

 

Sure you do. The card face is cloth, not cardboard.

 

This fascinated me as a young collector. I was around 12 or 13 when I saw 1977 Topps cloth stickers advertised, probably in our subscription to Baseball Digest magazine. I couldn't conceive of how they could make a card sticker out of cloth. The fact that they were the same size as a regular Topps card and showed the same photos (in most cases) as the regular set made me want them even more.

 

But I never ordered them, didn't have the money at the time and then later when I got back into chasing cards from my youth, the set was just a little bit cost prohibitive for me. Still, I put them on the "someday" list where they waited for years upon years.

 

Fast forward to Christmas week 2025. For someone who didn't receive any cards as presents this year, it's been a productive holiday as far as the hobby. The day after Christmas I pulled the trigger on the full 55-card 1977 Topps Cloth Stickers set, one of the few special sets issued in the late '70s.

 

Glorious. This is my happy place right here.

 

Those who know the '77 cloth sticker set well know that it also comes with 18 puzzle cards that form the 1976 AL and NL All-Star teams. They weren't part of the order and that's OK, I'm all about the sticker cards, don't care much about the puzzles.

 

This set was one of my first experiences with variations to the main Topps set. I had been slowly growing my appreciation for spin-offs from what was available down at the corner store. In 1975 it was Topps minis. In 1976, Topps issued Traded cards in packs with players painted into their new uniforms. In 1977, it was these elusive cloth stickers.

But it was more than that. When I think about it, this, for the first time, expanded my view of what a baseball card could be.

 

 

Look at the care that is evident on each back. Three separate facts about the player on each card. If this set came out today, not only would it be an online exclusive but the backs would be virtually blank.

 

One of the most interesting aspects of this set besides it being made from cloth, with a distinct feel, is that it shares much in common with the 1977 O-Pee-Chee set. Many of the variations from the Topps set that are in the cloth stickers set are duplicated in the OPC set.

 

For example, the Nolan Ryan:

 

 Here, the cloth sticker on the left, offers a zoomed-in version of the Topps photo with a different positioning of the facsimile autograph.

 

 

But there is almost no difference between the cloth sticker, at left, and the O-Pee-Chee card at right.

 

Since so many variations are the same between the cloth stickers and the OPC set, I'm wondering if they were produced at the same time. I still have no idea why the photos were changed, especially for players who didn't switch teams.

 

But these alterations from Topps -- well-known in the '77 OPC set -- I first saw in the cloth stickers set. I knew nothing about OPC when I was collecting in the '70s, I wasn't aware of OPC cards probably until the early '80s. Since I saw the cloth stickers first, those have always been more desirous.

 

 

Here are the Topps All-Star cards that are also in the cloth set.

 

 

And here are the cloth versions of those cards absent the All-Star banners, which is the same for the players' OPC cards, too.

 

Several All-Star players were omitted from the cloth stickers set (Luzinski, Lynn, Concepcion, Harrah, off the top of my head). But the checklist was limited to two players from every team -- even the expansion Blue Jays and Mariners -- with the only exceptions being the three given to the Yankees, Reds and Dodgers.

 

 

The cloth stickers also contain some of other variations. Some of these are also in OPC, but the Tony Perez is distinct as the OPC card features Perez in an actual Expos uniform rather than an airbrushed job. 

 

 

 The Topps versions of those same four cards.

 

 

I could contrast and compare the three sets all day -- Luis Tiant, left to right, Topps, OPC, cloth.

 

This was one of the biggies remaining as far as 1970s sets that I want. In these days of '70s Kellogg's cards tougher and tougher to find for reasonable prices and Hostess cards following the same path, landing this set has even more meaning.

 

I hope I'll be able to do similar celebrating in the future with Kellogg's and Topps and TCMA and Laughlin (which had cloth patches of its own earlier in the decade). But for now I will marvel at this set made of cloth -- that I absolutely will not peel and put on my jacket. But I could if I wanted.