Destination 6-for-5

Destination 6-for-5
May 22nd, 2010 by slangon

Another finski in the coffers of the local card shop. Another 6 cards in my grubby hands.

1976 Topps #10 Lou Brock

I’m alway a big fan of action shots on baseball cards. I mean, come on, who really wants to look at a close cropped picture of some dude’s ugly mug when they can be looking at some hot bat on ball action? Am I right? What I love even more about this card is that, although there’s not really all that much action going on at the moment, there is the promise of action. It’s like looking a coiled snake. You know somethings about to happen when Lou’s taking his lead, leaning slightly toward the next base. Awesome.

1973 Topps #213 Steve Garvey

I’ve mentioned in the past how the 1973 set is one of my favorite sets from the 70’s, right? I really want to put more active effort into collecting it, but now that I’m trying to make a push to complete the 1960 set, I feel torn. I really should wait until the ’60 is finished before I start in on another set, but it’s hard not to when you see cool cards just sitting there, begging to be brought home. I’ll tell you one thing though, if were Steve Garvey I’d be a little pissed about this choice of photograph. I mean, it looks more like it’s a Wes Parker card.

1973 Topps #165 Luis Aparicio

There wasn’t a whole lot of 73’s in the 6-4-5 bin this time around like there usually is. Many of the 73’s that were there were duplicates of cards that I had already freed from the confines of all that white cardboard. The previously mentioned Garvey and this Aparicio were the only 2 cards from that set that I didn’t already have. I remember seeing this particular card in there a few times in the past but always seemed to pass it over for some other card that I just had to have. I was always very torn about passing it up though. Something about that off-centering would call to me. Finally I figured if I didn’t take this poor bottom-heavy Luis home, he’d spend the rest of eternity sitting in that box. I’m pretty sure it’s the most extreme example of off centering that I own now. I can only assume that that black line at the bottom is a cut line, and I was actually a little surprised to see that Topps used solid lines to indicate where to cut the sheets rather than crop marks, which are pretty much standard across the printing industry. I’d be interested to see an uncut sheet from this set.

During this particular visit, the 6 for 5 bin held a bevy of ’63 Topps, which I unfortunately did not stumble across until I had been leisurely flipping through the box for about 15 minutes. By the time I came across the section of 63’s it was getting high time for me to mosey along so I only ended up grabbing 3 of them. Rest assured however that I will be returning for some more of them.

1963 Topps #336 Ed Bauta

Many moons ago, I had sent Mr. Bauta a TTM request that he was kind enough to sign and return to me. Why would I send a TTM request to a random player from the Cardinals that I dare say not too many people have heard of? Well, even though Ed only played for 5 seasons, he spent the last season and a half playing for the Mets. Anyway, the point is that when I making the custom card for Ed, it was impossible to track down a photo of him in a Mets uniform, so I ended up swiping the picture from this very card and doing some fancy air-brushing to turn a Cardinal into a Met. Maybe if Topps had PhotoShop during the 60’s and 70’s there wouldn’t be so many blog posts dedicated to their shoddy airbrush work.

1963 Topps #137 Mack Jones

I’m not 100% sure why I ended up picking this card over the other bunch of 63’s that were in the box. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I have this weird obsession with getting cards of teams that aren’t in existence any more. Not that the Braves don’t exist, but the Milwaukee Braves don’t exist any more. Maybe it has to do with the fact that you don’t come across too many Macks these days. Maybe it has to do with the weird juxtaposition of Mack’s serene, calm demeanor in the main photo with his intense, focused demeanor in the small black and white photo. Who knows? All I know is I looked at this card, I looked at a couple of other cards, and in the end Mack came home with me.

1963 Topps #253 Rookie Stars

This card, on the other hand was a no-brainer as far as picking over any other card. As I pointed out a few days ago, I really love the look of these ’63 Rookie Stars cards, with all their disembodied heads. I was also drawn to the name “Deacon Jones”. That sounds like some sort of 70′ blaxploitation super-detective. I was further drawn to Deacon Jones when I looked at the back of the card.