Prisoner of the 25¢ Bin
March 1st, 2012 by slangon

It’s been quite a spell since I’ve done one of these quarter bin posts. It’s not my fault though, I swear. My local card shop has been kind of sporadic with it lately. Apparently they opened up a second location a couple of towns over and moved a lot of the inventory to that location. I guess in an attempt to drive a bit of business to the new spot, the quarter bin was one of the things that got moved. The pain in the ass part is that the new spot is just far enough away to make it kind of a hassel to get there, so I never go there. Anyway, I recently needed to go to the original location to pick up some pages and noticed that they had a couple of boxes of vintage-ish cards. Upon asking, I found out they were sort of quarter bin/dollar bin hybrids. If a card was in a sleeve, it was a buck. If it wasn’t, it was a quarter. That seems like a weird system to me. I would imagine some unscrupulous cad could pretty easily slip a card out of its sleeve and try and get a $0.75 discount.

There were 2 boxes, if memory serves, but I only had time to (very quickly) go through one of them. The one I went through was all cards from 1973-1979. I picked out a couple of bucks worth of non-sleeved cards, which I’ll show over the next few days. Today’s offering consists of a gaggle of 1976 Topps. Like many older sets, the ’76 offering is one that I don’t have very many of, outside of Mets, and oddly enough, Hall of Fame players. I guess that makes sense in a weird way, since I’m not really collecting it, and when I’m snatching up cheap commons, I usually tend to focus on little bit older cards. Either way, I do like the look of the ’76 set, so I was pretty happy to be able to grab some commons for a quarter a pop.

1976 Topps #72 Hal McRae

When I was searching the box, my battle plan was to look for A) cards of players that I’ve grown to like, or B) cards that look cool. I’ll give you half a guess which category this one fell into. I’d imagine if I was ever a Major League ballplayer and ended up on a baseball card, I’d have a similar look on my face.

1976 Topps #74 Oscar Gamble

This card kind of fell into both categories. I’ve grown to have quite an appreciation for Oscar, but I was also attracted to this card because of the photograph. I was immediately draw to the way his batting helmet contains his ‘fro, only allowing it to pop out on the one side without the earflap. Plus, I was having fun trying to envision why Oscar is facing directly at the camera, but it looks like a lot of people in the stands are looking up and to the right, presumably watching the path of the ball.

1976 Topps #320 Willie Horton

Back when I first started moving more towards beat up vintage and away from new cards, I had picked up an earlier Willie Horton card from the same local card shop. I think it was a ’65 maybe. Anyway, when I was researching Willie in order to write about the card, I found out that because of his superstitious nature, he used the same batting helmet for his entire career, and when he switched teams, he would have it repainted to the new team’s colors. That’s the kind of thing that makes me want to collect a guy.

1976 Topps #371 Ellie Hendricks

This, to me, is just an absolutely beautiful card.  It really makes me wish for a lazy Saturday in June. That’s exactly how I feel when it’s a beautiful summer day and I’m cracking that first beer of the day and they’re announcing the opening lineup on the radio.

1976 Topps #473 Paul Blair

I feel like every card I have of Paul Blair, he always looks like he’s all about business. I might even say pissed off. I think it’s good for a team to have a guy like that on it. I feel like the closest the Mets have os Danny Murphy. Interestingly enough, Blair was actually drafted by the Mets in 1961, but then drafted from the Mets by the Orioles the following year.

1976 Topps #475 Joe Rudi

I have this problem. It’s okay. I can admit it. Whenever I see a card that says “All-Star” on it, I need to buy it. Does that make me a terrible person?

1976 Topps #528 Dock Ellis

I’m sure most everyone has seen this by now, but in case you haven’t, watch this.

1976 Topps #565 Tug McGraw

I hate when I do this. I was sooooo convinced that I didn’t have this Tug McGraw card, I didn’t even bother to check my fancy dancy Google Docs spreadsheet that I set up to stop myself from buying multiple copies of cards I already own. Guess who already had this card.

1976 Topps #572 Rich Coggins

I’m by no means a huge Curb Your Enthusiasm fan (at the same time I don’t have anything against it) but I did see one episode of it a long, long time ago. The only thing I remember about it was that Larry was friends with someone called Krazee Eyez Killa (You probably should’t click that if you’re at work or have small children in the room).

1976 Topps #645 Darrell Porter

There’s something really awesome to me about the combination of the 1970’s Brewers uniform, the groovy shades, the lamb chops and the fu manchu. Add to all that the pink/purple/yellow color combo and this makes for one sweet-ass 70’s card. I also like that there’s no visual reference in the background. Just a bank of fluffy clouds. Add to that Darrell’s check swing/chopping down a tree pose and it adds a Bunyun-esque quality to it. Man, this card just keeps getting better and better.

That’s does it for the 76’s. Stay tuned to see what other 70’s goodness a pile of quarter’s provided me.

One Response to “Prisoner of the 25¢ Bin”

  1. Nice batch of ’76 cars, very nice. I almost didn’t scroll down, just looking at Ursula Andress…

Leave a Reply