The Quest for the 1960 Topps Set, Part VII
May 3rd, 2010 by slangon

Last night as I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep after watching 6 or 7 innings of that so called Mets “game” last night, I must’ve written about 70 scathing posts in my head, ripping the team apart after those 2 pathetic attempts to keep themselves in first place. Rather than clutter up this post with unnecessary negativity, I will limit the rant to two words: ugh* and sigh**.

Let’s move on and look at some cards.

Another package that I got in the mail right before I left for vacation was my latest haul from Sportlots. I got all of these from the same seller that I got a batch from a few weeks ago. Although I normally don’t shy away from lesser condition cards, this particular seller seems to be very generous in his application of grades. I figure why spend $0.30 on a really dinged up, horrible looking card when you can spend $0.30 on a not so much dinged up, slightly less horrible looking card.

Anyway, this is what I got for the price of a blaster.

That is a stack of 44 1960 Topps cards, mostly commons, all in fairly good shape, with 1 or 2 exceptions. Obviously, I won’t bother to show all 44, but I will show you some of them.

Geez. How many Willies did the San Francisco Giants have on their team? Looking at this card I’ve realized that one thing I like about older cards is trying to figure out what stadium the player’s photograph was shot in. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m knowledgeable enough about old ball parks to even begin to take an educated guess. It’s fun to try anyway. I would suppose that since Willie is wearing his home whites, this could be either in Seals Stadium (if the photo was taken during the ’59 season) or Candlestick Park (if it was shot in 1960). Looking at a picture of Seals Stadium though, it doesn’t seem like that park had an overhang, so I would guess this is Candlestick.

That was fun. Let’s do some more.

Well, this certainly doesn’t seem to be Fenway, which would make sense since Jim is in his road grays. It would make sense that it’s an American League park and there were just 8 clubs in the A.L. at that time. We know it’s not Fenway and it’s not Yankee Stadium. That leaves just 6 parks. That gap in the bleachers seems too narrow to be Memorial Stadium. Cleveland Stadium seems like a possibility, although I’m not 100% sold. Griffith Stadium is out. Tiger Stadium didn’t have a break in the seats like that. Municipal Stadium in Kansas City didn’t have the seats go that far into the outfield. I think Comiskey Park is the winner. That scoreboard and the overhangs on the seats seem to match up pretty well.

That one is pretty easy. Thats’s got to be Old Yankee Stadium. That facade is pretty unmistakeable.

That overhang looks like Comiskey park as well, which makes since as Frank is a member of the Pale Hose. This was the one card in the bunch was pretty messed up. I have no idea how to explain that damage. Water maybe?

This one is a little tougher. First of all, it’s a little hard to tell if that’s a home white uniform or a road gray uniform. The uniforms look much grayer on the guys behind him, so I’ll go with a road uni, which knocks Memorial Stadium off our list. Those windows and the very low angle of the seats are the two things that stand out. Griffith, Cleveland and Comiskey all had windows at the back of the seats like that. Comiskey’s windows looked a little more distinctively shaped, so I think that’s out. Comparing it with that DiMaggio picture, I think I’ll go with Griffith Stadium.

Enough of Name that Stadium (besides, the rest of these cards don’t have enough clues to play the game properly). I also scored some nerds.

I also scored 2 more of my favorite sub-set from 1960, The All-Star Rookie, one of who is also a nerd.

For all you Wally Moon fans out there, here’s Tex Clevenger.

By the way, those windows in the back ground look much more like the windows at Comiskey, which leads me to believe this photo was taken there. I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that 3 out of the 5 cards I played Name the Stadium with were at Comiskey. Hmmm.

Finally, here is the one non-common that I got in this bunch.

I believe that with the addition of this Jim Kaat rookie, I have successfully tracked down the three biggest name rookies from this set. And talk about rookie, Jim looks like he’s 11 years old in this picture. Did anyone ever explain child labor laws to the Senators?

Well there you have it. With this batch, I’m left with 383 cards to go out of 572. That means I’m a third of the way through. Not too bad. Still a long way to go though.

*Ugh represents my frustration at knowing that if they had just made a few specific plays, the landscape of both games could’ve been very different. If Reyes and Cora had caught those two pop-ups, perhaps Pelfrey might’ve gotten out of that inning giving up only 1 or 2 runs. Maybe they still would’ve lost, but at least it wouldn’t have been so embarrassing. And if big bad Johan had just gotten out a 47 year old man, he would’ve gotten out of that inning unscathed.

** Sign is for my resignation that this is going to be a very hard season to watch.

4 Responses to “The Quest for the 1960 Topps Set, Part VII”

  1. I have some extra 1960 Topps you might need. You have a want list for them?

  2. Yes sir.

    http://www.slangon.com/wantlist/wantlist1960.html

  3. I have some extra 1960 Topps you might need. You have a want list for them?
    +1

  4. Sure do. It’s here: http://www.slangon.com/wantlist/wantlist1960.html

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