Two 1970 Topps Team Sets Looking Good

I don't have much of a hankering to collect the entire 1970 Topps baseball set, but I've been working on getting two team sets completed, one of which I just received the final card for yesterday. That would be the 1970 Seattle Pilots, who had pictures of themselves snapped for their big upcoming 2nd season in Seattle, only weeks before moving before the season to Milwaukee and becoming the Milwaukee Brewers. 

I've slowly picked off each of the Pilots via trades and single-card orders on eBay and Sportlots. This week, the final 3 that I didn't have arrived - Ted Kubiak, manager Dave Bristol, and the 1970 Seattle Pilots team card. I have to say it's a satisfying feeling. I've been able to assemble 1969 and 1970 Pilots sets, along with all sorts of long-tail Pilots ephemera including this set and some strange cards. About the only Pilots card thing I don't have is the 2018 Topps Heritage Seattle Pilots autograph set. Not a single card. They're, uh, pricey. Going on my want list now. Anyway, here were the final 3 cards I needed to complete 1970:

The other 1970 set I'm still working on is - surprise - the 1970 San Francisco Giants. Made a little progress this week with some heavy-hitting Juan Marichal cards and a few other gems. Willie Mays will be the big get in this one, but I was able to land both McCovey cards already.

More Hot Ones Scorching Up The Mailbox

Guess it was a busy card-orderin' week about ten days ago at Card Hemorrhage HQ, because the mailbox lit up like a Rockefeller Center Xmas tree on Saturday, thanks to a trio of received orders from COMC + a couple from eBay. Let's take a look together, shall we?

First, I picked up a handful of those "Tarot of the Diamond" cards one of you blogging rogues was writing about the other day - my apologies for already forgetting whom. I'm following 40-some-odd excellent card blogs in my Feedly feeder-thing, and it's like a daily orgy of card-collecting excitement, except I don't always write everything down. Sometimes I just get excited and start ordering things like this 2020 Gypsy Queen "Tarot of the Diamond" card for Mike Trout.

Now, like Nick over at Dime Boxes said in one of his recent posts, I'm not going totally out of my way to collect Trout cards, but hey, if they can come into my hands easily, I'll make a special spot for them in a box. My Mike Trout cards. This is now one of them. There are 22 in this year's Tarot of the Diamond series. Perhaps you have some extras that you don't want? Feel free to let me know, and we can work something out, I'm certain.

Also picked up a couple from the 2018 Gypsy Queen Tarot of the Diamond series as well. I definitely purposefully collect Ichiro, and hey, maybe I sort of collect Trout, too:

Next, a couple of San Francisco Giants team sets I'm working on got a little closer to being completed. A few weeks ago Fuji sent me my first 2005 Topps Emerald Nuts cards for the Giants, and I was instantly smitten. I picked up a few more of them this weekend:

There are 30 of those in all, and so I'm about a third of the way there now, all told. Someone on eBay was selling a batch of the 2011 Emerald Nuts Giants as well, so I threw down a couple of bucks for those to get me started on the 38-card set:

My, what a team that was - a team that won a World Series the year before, if you can believe it. I've got 13/38 of these, and my math says that's 34.21% of the way there. Next, let's talk about Shohei Otani. I watched his return to pitching yesterday against the Oakland A's, and he went 6 batters without getting a single out, and was then pulled. Not so good, Shohei. But here are a few cards of his I grabbed, all of them featuring him with Ichiro as well:

In my posts on my small sub-collection of hockey cards, I mentioned that I'm actively collecting the entire O-Pee-Chee 1973-1974 World Hockey Association set. The biggest hurdle to get my over the hump on this one were the two "expensive" cards in the set, and with some money having recently come in from someone having bought $100 worth of records from me, I sprung for these two ringers:

Everything else from here on in this set is just a numbers game for me. Can I find some shaggy-haired dude from the the Phoenix Roadrunners whom I've never heard of? Here's hoping I can. 

Also, I'm getting really close to a goal of having the 1970 Seattle Pilots set completed. The high-numbered ones are quite a bit more pricey than I'd thought they would be, no matter the lack of notoriety of the player. Alas, my Bobby Bolin card arrived with a little bit of flair on his upper lip:

Do I replace it with a "normal" Bolin? Or do I live with this bastardization of his card? Here a couple of other Pilots items that arrived this weekend:

Finally, let's end it with this 1970 Kellogg's Willie McCovey card. Such a great series. I'm so glad the kids of the early 70s hung on to these things and they're now making their way into the hands of morons like me. Until next time, folks!

The Pilots Cards That Came After The Pilots

I've made no secret of my affinity for the Seattle Pilots, a one-year MLB team from 1969 whom I've written about here, here, here and here. Given that they existed for a mere year, and had Topps cards for only two years, they are eminently collectable and an "easy win", as they say (though I haven't finished up that 1970 Topps set just yet).

Now I'm interested in the more goofball, post-1970 Seattle Pilots cards that exist. We already talked about the 1983 Renata Galasso set here, but some other Pilots cards have recently come to my attention, and so I'm sprung into action, by the proverbial hook or crook. First, how about this 1992 Leaf Heritage Series Paul Molitor, bedecked in a full Pilots get-up? As you may well recall, the Pilots turned into Paul's Milwaukee Brewers in 1970, where they remain to this day (albeit in the National League now). Paul's card says "The Seattle Pilots would prove to be mistake", which I guess is pretty much the general consensus on the team.

Now this next specimen is not a posthumous Pilots card, but rather a 1969 Don Mincher card that Milton Bradley put out. Milton Bradley, like the game people? Anyone know if this was part of a game? I'm getting the sense that it was, if you look at all the code at the bottom of the game, as well as on the card's back. Me, I got mine via a COMC order, and it was quite inexpensive to boot. I suppose it's because it's, you know, Don Mincher and not, you know, Hank Aaron.

We already covered Mincher and Tommy Harper's lovely 1970 Kellogg's cards here, and while I think I've found most everything that's card-sized (i.e. not stamps or posters) that came out while this team was still around - with the exception of this 1969 Tommy Davis Deckle Edge card I still need to grab somewhere - most of what's to still be collected is "post-Pilots".

Here's a good one: Ichiro Suzuki in a Pilots uniform. 2010 Topps National Chicle Diamond Stars, #538/999. It even lists him as being "on" the Pilots, while giving his birth year as 1973. Wait a minute, that's.....impossible....

Finally, I recently became aware of the 1989 and 1990 Pacific Trading Cards "Baseball Legends" series. Perhaps there are more editions as well - my left hand is tired of typing and I don't feel like looking right now. But check it out - there are some Pilots "legends" like Gary Bell and Diego Segui! Thanks very much to Nick for the Frank Crosetti card as well. 

That's it for this week's edition of Pilots roulette. We'll see if I can come up with another batch that'll be worthy of yet another post.

Carrying On With The 1970 Seattle Pilots

One of my early joys here, now that I'm back collecting cards as I am, has been putting together the 1969 Topps Seattle Pilots team set - then finding out that there was a 1970 Pilots team set as well, photographed and assembled mere moments before the team packed up and moved to Milwaukee to become the Brewers. I talked about the '69 cards here, and scanned my first four cards in the '70 set here.

You'd think that collecting those two Topps sets would be the end of it, right? Get those two Pilots teams assembled and you're all done? Nah, it doesn't work that way. Trading Card Database says there are 463 of 'em to gather, if you're so inclined. Here's what I'm doing: getting those two Topps sets, picking off the two 1970 Kellogg's Pilots cards that I know about - and then figure it out from there. I'll skip the O-Pee-Chee version of the 1970s set, and maybe go deeper into a regional issue or two, perhaps something a gas station put out. They look really cool.

What you're seeing here are the 1970s Kellogg's cards for Don

Mincher and Tommy Harper. Relatively speaking, those were the guys that raked for the Pilots in their inaugural - and only - season in 1969. My Harper card is a bit beat-up, but it'll do for now. Keep in mind that he stole 73 bases for them that year - then went on to hit 31 homers for Milwaukee in 1970 (!).

I'm pretty smitten with both cards. Shlabotnik Report wrote about the Mincher one here. I guess my question to you folks out there is: once you've got the Topps and the Kellogg's, are there other Pilots sets and/or cards worth going after? I think I could be happy with this 1983 Renato Galasso set in my possession. There, I just added it to my want list (and just as quickly removed it, after finding the set on eBay for a decent price). What else?

I've scanned up all the 1970 Topps Pilots that I've added since my last post about them. I've still got twelve more to add (all listed here), and listen, if you've got extras of those lying around and enjoy trading with like-minded obsessives, I'm right here. That said, buying them online is fairly straightforward and not all that expensive, either. I'll be sure and give 'em a good scan-n-post once I've completed that set.

A Few 1970 Seattle Pilots

As I was collecting the '69 Seattle Pilots set I wrote about yesterday, I found out to my surprise that there had actually been 1970 Topps Seattle Pilots cards as well. While the Seattle team was struggling with bankruptcy and figuring out their next move, Topps had a 1970 set to create, and did so accordingly. Weeks later, the team was bought by a young entrepreneur named Bud Selig, and moved to Milwaukee to become the Brewers whom we know and love today.

Most of these dudes went on to Milwaukee with the team. The Brewers were 1 game better than the 1969 Pilots, losing only 97 games to the Pilots' 98. So out of the blue a few weeks ago, Mike from Junk Wax Dig offered to send over a few doubles he had from his 1970 "Pilots" set. I was more than happy to accept them - and I reckoned I now had a new team set I'd want to complete. I do, and I will. It's certainly not the case that these guys are bank-breakers.

Here are a few more gems from that 1970 Pilots/Brewers team. Special attention to Gene Brabender, please!