Take this 1974 Caruso Phoenix Giants collection that I just picked up for a whopping $5.99. No, there are no stars in there - unless you count our hero Mike Sadek as a star, as I do - and it's only 11 cards. Yet that's still only 55 cents a card, and as you can see, they're quite cool in a very DIY/minor league way. I don't know a ton about the Caruso cards in general, but they weren't just made for the Phoenix team - they were for all of the AAA / Pacific Coast League teams of the era: the Tucson Toros, the Sacramento Solons and the like. If the TCDB is to be believed, the first Phoenix Giants set ever to be created was this 11-card collection.
They kept it going for a while, as well - just check out how awesome the 1976 cards look - but Caruso had competition in the 70s from Circle K-branded cards in some years, Coke- or Pepsi-branded cards in others, and Valley National Bank in still others. I've been buying those up as well, sometimes for as low as $2.99 a set. The Carusos - at least these 1974s - don't have anything on the back, so that's a bit of a demerit - but otherwise they're definitely something I like having around.
Ladies and gentlemen, your 1974 Phoenix Giants!
A few weeks ago, Julie over at A Cracked Bat wrote about Dimebox Nick sending her the famous book: Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book. Either that night or the next morning, I pulled my copy off of the shelf and flipped through it. After seeing that Rocky Bridges, I remembered something was written about him in that book. I just checked... the author stated that he "looked more like a ballplayer than any other ballplayer who ever lived". If you look up his 1959 Topps card (the one used in the book), you'll see what he's talking about.
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