New Collecting Focus

Happy Thanksgiving!

The blog title may oversell it a bit, but I am adding a new dimension to my collecting.  In one way, I already have enough to keep me busy.  But, my quest for autographed 1960 and 1961 Fleer  cards have never excited me the way my similar effort on 1963 did. Consequently, that project has gone stagnant and I haven't added anything new since June. It's not dead quite yet, but it is getting there.

I am still going to be collecting vintage baseball sets, but I have been struggling to find something new to collect to add a bit of serendipity to this hobby.  Don't get me wrong. I still love collecting baseball sets but, like baseball itself, it can be a little staid at times.  1972 (and to a lesser extent, 1975) Topps added a little bit of hipness to the design.  but, for the most part, vintage baseball card design is a serious, buttoned down affair.

So, what have I decided on?

Vintage basketball cards! It is no secret that I have increasingly taken to basketball over the previous few years, what with the OKC Thunder here in town.  I think this will generally mirror my baseball set collection:  Topps sets from 1979 and earlier, plus the 1961-62 Fleer set.

As you can see below, the design of the 1972-73 set is funky.  The previous years set has a similar vibe.  Even though subsequent sets aren't as impactful as those two sets, I find that the Topps basketball sets are more colorful and offbeat than baseball, Granted, the 1980-81 set is going to look familiar to baseball collectors, but I don't plan on building that set, so it doesn't count.

Baseball collectors make a big deal about Oscar Gamble's 1976 Topps Traded card, but as you can see, basketball cards were already sporting gloriously large hairdos at least 4 years earlier.

Neal here looks like he moonlights in the offseason as the leather biker in The Village People.

Now Jim looks a lot like a high school math teacher who is overly enthusiastic and probably has a kitten-hanging-from-a-branch inspirational poster on the wall in his classroom.

In all seriousness, it appears that most of the cards in the 264 card set (of which I have 66) are of the posed and matted version seen above.  But, there are also action shots

And Championship series subsets.  As you can see, this was prior to the 1976 merger of the NBA and ABA, so there is two championship subsets.  The set itself is divided between the two leagues, with cards 1 to 176 focused on the NBA and the ABA getting cards 177 to 264. Basically, the set was three 88 card sheets with the senior circuit getting two sheets and the upstart ABA (which formed in 1967) getting one.

The highlights of the set include the (Doctor J) Julius Erving rookie card, along with cards for Wilt Chamberlain, Pete Maravich, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Actually, all four of those guys have two cards each: their base card along with a card in the All-Stars subsets.

Speaking of basketball:

This is my place on the waitlist for OKC Thunder season tickets.  Based on the way I've moved up the waitlist, there is a chance I'll be qualified for season tickets next season (2019-2020), though it is probably more likely that it will be the season after that. 

That's it for now.

What I am listening to: Thunderstruck by AC/DC

What I am watching: "God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly"