I had dabbled in football cards a couple of years earlier – yielding a 1976 Topps Walter Payton rookie card, among others – but my first foray into set collecting was 1979 Topps baseball. I was nine.
This was years before Cardageddon, circa 1987, when the glut arrived and the cardboard became worthless (fitting that the prize rookie in ’87 was Barry Bonds, whose accomplishments retained their value on a similar scale!).
In the summer of ’79, I would trudge up to the 7-11 with my next door neighbors, Scott and Kevin, as often as possible. I’d buy as many packs as I could at 25 cents a pop, rip them open, and throw them in a paper bag to sort when I got home; there was no internet to tell me about the value of mint condition!
(My jaws got a good workout that summer. I ate every stick of that stale gum, even when it shattered like glass into shards in my chubby little hand.)
After trades with the neighbors and a fellow fourth grader (shout out to Todd Snyder), I put a significant dent in the 726-card set, and you can bet I used those checklist cards to track my weekly progress. My cards were sorted by team and stored in Topps card lockers. Of course there were a few setbacks, most notably when Scott’s little sister wouldn’t trade me her Ozzie Smith. I lived in San Diego, where there weren’t a lot of good professional ball players. Ozzie’s value was inflated, despite his weak bat, and Michelle knew it. I hope she went on to negotiate contracts for a living, because she was shrewd and unrelenting. Tears were shed. Eventually, though, I had my Ozzie, my Bump Wills error card, about six Joe Niekro cards and at least 34 Jim Wohlfords. I had a growing collection of All-Stars, including Reggie, Rose, Bench and even Don Money, a borderline All-Star with a great name.
When I got Rod Carew, I just needed one more All-Star, yet I couldn’t pull a George Brett to save my life. And nobody had one they’d trade me. I was probably about 723 cards into the set … a summer’s worth of quarters invested … when I finally opened a pack, flipped through a few cards and saw the Royals third baseman in his defensive crouch.
It most glorious feeling one could experience as a nine-year-old, or at least I thought so until someone dared me to kiss Michelle that winter. (I imagine that was the day I forgave her for not trading me Ozzie). Brett was my hero after that. I got his 1975 rookie card (the mini) as a birthday present; it’s the card I cherished the most, despite the gum stain. As a reporting intern covering spring training years later, I was awed by Brett’s presence in the Royals clubhouse (I did have a nice conversation with Kevin Appier!)
And, yes, I eventually completed the 1979 Topps set, which is now showcased in plastic card sheets, in a binder, in my mom’s garage.
Postscript: 1979 Topps was the catalyst for a great friendship. While an editor at the Daily Northwestern, another editor and I struck up a conversation about card collecting. The conversation continued that night over beers, as we spent about 3 hours reeling off the names of every player we could remember – Barry Bonnell, Mark Lemongello, Ken Landreaux — and describing the poses on each card. The friendship endures to this day.
Bill Evans, is a Portland, Ore., based communicator who has worked with the National Basketball Association and four member clubs, including one that shall not be named after relocating from its rightful home in the Pacific Northwest.
