Wednesday, July 22, 2020

1971 Giants - Complete!

This was a fun little set to cobble together, and definitely not as easy as I'd thought it would be. To finish my collection of Topps 1971 Giants without spending a fortune, I bought the Willie Mays card you see here. Final piece in the puzzle. It's certainly not in the best shape; it's off-centered a bit, and yet at $8, it was the only '71 Mays I could find that wasn't in the $25+ range.

But hey! The 1971 Giants, your National League West champions, are now complete! I wrote a bit about this set - and that team - here. Mays. McCovey. Marichal. Bonds (Bobby). The whole 1971 NL West Champs. When I was growing up in the late 70s, that was the refracted glow I had to bask in, all the way until we finally did it again in 1987 and 1989.

I had two other cards I had to take care of to complete the set since the last time I posted about my epic quest. The first was Bob Heise (high number card! #691!), whom I'd never heard of before. Turns out Heise played 11 years in the majors, up until 1977, and in his 1,232 lifetime plate appearances, smacked one home run - and it was for your '71 Giants. Here he is, on his one and only Giants card:

Folks, I have to get better with my scanner. Unlike the Mays card above, that really is off-center a bit, the Heise card is that way simply because I'm not so good at using my scanner's software. The other card I needed was the Juan Marichal "Play Baseball Scratch Off" insert. I got it via CardBarrel for really not very much dinero:


I thought I'd scan a few others that I didn't include in the last post. Check out John Cumberland's bad-ass logo-free black hat, and enjoy the other '71 Giants, whose set I may have mentioned I have now completed.




5 comments:

  1. Congrats! Probably feels pretty good.

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  2. Well done, and the Mays card isnt THAT bad.

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  3. Congratulations on picking up an $8 vintage Mays... and completing your 1971 team set.

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  4. It's probably not known at all outside of San Diego, but Fuentes is a pretty legendary early Padre. The mythology centers around San Diego Stadium P.A. announcer John DeMott's introduction of him as "Tito! FUEEEEN-TES!!!" and his trademark bat-flip that he did every at-bat when he first entered that batter's box - tapping the handle-end of the bat on the plate and then flipping the bat up in the air and catching it right-side up, ready to face the first pitch.

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