Thursday, May 20, 2010

1970 Topps Baseball Story #5, Vada Pinson

I assume card companies put a ton of design work into each new set. Fronts, backs, stats, and photos all take careful and artful arrangement. In 1970, Topps took "artful" a step further by publishing a 24-booklet set of player comics, each with a 6-page story. Its #5 features all-around great player Vada Pinson.

Click images for more detail

Credit your battery-mate, kids!

The swimsuit's an odd touch...

OK, even I know no stadium has yellow basepaths


That checklist is a full range of all-timers and one-timers, Willie Mays to Wally Bunker. I've never seen anyone build the set--be the first on your block! :-)

Value: Booklets cost very little, relative to regular cards. Hall-of-Famers run up to $5 and most cost $1 or less. So much for the high cost of modern art!

Fake / Reprints: It'd be easy to fake this set, but probably wouldn't be worth it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very cool, I've never seen these before.

Matthew Glidden said...

Agreed, it's a pretty interesting set. Hard to keep track of all the extra sets Topps made in those days. 1970 alone had candy lids, posters, scratch-offs, these booklets, and oversized supers! Quite a buffet at the candy store.