Lots and Lots of Sportlots
January 31st, 2010 by slangon
This is the first part of another successful haul from Sportlots. The second portion was coming from a separate seller, and has yet to arrive here at SlangKo World Headquarters. That particular group of cards will be dealt with at a later date.
This group of cards, which will be dealt with right here and now sprung from the realization that out of all the Mets teams sets that I’m building from throughout the years, there was one set that was particularly pathetic. No, I’m not talking about the 1965 set. I refer to the 1970 Topps set. I had exactly one Mets card from that year. And it wasn’t even Seaver or Ryan or even Bud Harrelson or Cleon Jones or Ron Swoboda. It was Bobby “SIlent P” Pfeil. Of course, everyone knows Bobby Pfeil. He was acquired by the Mets from the Cardinals in an “unknown trade”. I guess that’s bad news for you when teams don’t even bother keeping records of the transactions that sent you from one team to another. He played 62 games for the Mets during their Championship season, presumably earning a ring. After that, he showed up for 44 games as a Phillie in 1971. Then nothing. That’s what my 1970 Topps Mets collection consisted of. Technically, I also had a 1970 Jerry Grote, by that was tainted with French.
So I turned to Sportlots to remedy that situation.
(Note: Please excuse the condition notes on the face of the card. The seller wrote that on the outside of the penny sleeve, and I was too lazy to take the cards out when I was scanning. At the time, I didn’t realize how annoying it would prove to be. In no way am I attempting to show off the fact that I now own an Excellent/Mint copy of 1970 Topps Don Cardwell.)
It’s always cool to get a vintage team card. It’s even better when it happens to be your team. It’s even better when it says “World Champions” across the top.
All of these World Series highlight cards are very fun, even the one depicting the Orioles highlights. I’ve always actualy been a little gunshy on whether or not to count that as a 1970 Mets card. In the long run, I decided to do it.
Normally, when I complete a team set for a given year, I’ll put the cards in binder pages numerically. When ever I finish this set, I’m putting Cal Koonce next to Jerry Koosman.
That did it for the 1970 Mets. The same dude was also selling this little gem on the cheap.
I was mentioning a few days ago that a sticky part of team collecting is when you start to get into earlier rookies or big name guys. As a Met collector the big White Whales are the Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver rookies. There is also a group of cards that aren’t as bad as the Ryan/Seaver rookies, but aren’t chump change either. Some of these include Casey Stengel cards, Gill Hodges cards, Duke Snider cards, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges cards, the whole high number series thing. Frank Thomas seems to be in that group a little bit as well. Fortunately, this one wasn’t too bad so I just figured I’d bite the bullet and get it out of the way.
I was also able to score a few ’72 cards from the same guy. I’ve never actually seen the Yellow Submarine movie, but after having see so many 1972 Topps cards, I don’t feel that it’s necessary.
It’s better still to get two vintage team cards of your favorite team.
I don’t think I remember seeing a League Leader card with 4 guys on it as compared to 3. It’s pretty clear that the reason for that is because Carlton, Downing and Seaver all tied for second with 20 wins. I can swear though that there was a League Leader from the 2009 Topps base set that had 2 guys tied for third in whatever stat, but only put one guy on the front. I can’t remember what stat it was for, except that I’m pretty sure it was an offensive category.
While I was rooting around this guys “shop” for old Metsies, I kept seeing all these other old cards that I would like to get, and they were all in the $0.18-$0.24 range, so I really found it impossible to resist. I think I have a problem. Either that or I have 9 cool old baseball cards that I didn’t have before.
I got some League Leader cards, all of the pitching variety. That Jenkins/Gibson/Singer card is especially cool.
I got some old manager cards.
And some old team cards.
And finally, I got this Gary Wagner.
Why did I get this random nobody from the Red Sox? Well, often times, in order to easily figure out which cards from whatever old set are of the Mets, I’ll look up that year on Beckett, and then narrow it down to just the Mets. For whatever reason, Gary Wagner always shows up in that group for the 1970 Topps set. So basically, Beckett conned me into buying this Gary Wagner card. Of course I could’ve double checked their findings against the Mets roster for 1969/1970, so maybe you could argue that I bought this card because I’m a dumb-ass.
Either way, dumb-ass or con-job, another sweet vintage haul.
I’ve had good luck with sportlots. It’s a good way to get several cards of a team set at once.The next time I get more cards for a team set (probably 1972 Giants or one of the 60s Giants sets) I’ll probably do it through sportlots.
i a seller on sportlots myself and have alot of those 70’s cards in better condition
if ud like to check them out
im on the preferred sellers list under dcottonswab
enjoy the collecting everyone