Card of the Moment #38
July 2nd, 2010 by slangon
Well, I was unable to get my arse in gear last night to work up a post on the 2010 Topps Series 2 Blaster that my wife gave me for my birthday, and since I swore up and down to myself that I wasn’t going to rip into my Ginter box until I got all that stuff posted and out of the way, and since this weekend will most likely be eaten up with barbecues and beer and fireworks and wiffle ball and swimming, it seems like that box is destined to remain sealed for the weekend. In the meantime, here’s a Card of the Moment.
1965 Topps #30 Jim Bouton
Round about the beginning of the year, when I first declared 2010 to be The Year of Vintage, I pointed out that for whatever reason, out of all the vintage cards I owned, I had very few from 1965. Well, in the ensuing months, my small cadre of ’65 Topps cards has grown exponentially. I don’t have the exact numbers, but they’ve certainly spilt over into 4 or 5 binder pages.
In all the various designs through the years, Topps has made pretty good use of color on their cards. One of the things that I specifically like about the ’65 design is that they use one colored border for each team (although they sometimes used the same color for multiple teams). You can compare that color usage to, say the ’59 set, where they use a handful of colors, but there doesn’t seem to be too much rhyme or reason as to why a particular player was given a particular colored background. It especially works out well for team collectors. I find it a lot nicer to look at my ’65 Mets team set and see the same green border on card after card than to see what looks like a rainbow vomited on my baseball cards.
Part of me is also really happy that they used pink for the Yankees. Ha ha, the Yankees are pink. They’re like girls.
I’ve always liked the backs of the ’65 cards as well. I feel like they’re well laid out, feature a good amount of information, both statistical and biographical, and they’re pretty easy to read. I also enjoy card backs that have those little interpretive cartoons that Topps used to include on their cards back in the day. Jim Boutons is a pretty damn awesome example.
Nothing says “I’m-a-pitcher-who-dominated-a-team-named-after-a-type-of-bird-in-last-years-World-Series” like a guy in a baseball uniform knocking birds out of the sky with a shotgun. I think if I start another custom card set, I’m definitely incorporating cartoons on the backs.
Hahaha! Oh, yeah! Man, that is a great cartoon! Couldn’t do that kind of thing now.