Just finished going through all my '75 Topps. It's too late to do a full-blown post, but I now have 449 cards, more than two-thirds of the way through the set. I'm pleased with that result. The lot of 422 cards added approximately 300 new cards to my set, as well as quite a few for the team sets.

This weekend, I'm going to post the cards I have of players who went on to become managers.

Oh, and I did get a Brett card amongst all of them. :)

I love watching the show Storage Wars. One of my dreams is to win a storage locker auction and find a whole bunch of 1975 Topps cards in the locker. There's just two things wrong with that dream:

1. There aren't any storage locker auctions in Australia. Here, if you don't pay your bill, the companies just open up the locker themselves, take all the good stuff and sell it, and throw the rest away. Which I suppose is fair enough.
2. Even if there were storage locker auctions here, I highly doubt any lockers would contain any 1975 Topps cards.

However, I have a new friend named Jeff. Jeff is a storage auction enthusiast who happened to come across some 1975 Topps cards in a locker he bought. 422 of them, in fact. So Jeff put the lot on eBay, where I was able to snag it for right around 42 bucks. In other words, I got all those cards for the 10-cents-a-card benchmark I think is fair.

The cards arrived yesterday, and so far I have resisted the urge to bust out all of them in a hours-long 1975 Topps cataloguing and filing orgy. I've only gone through a third instead. Here are two highlights.


Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the best card in 1975 Topps. Not Robin Yount, or George Brett, or either of the Hank Aarons. Why is this Herb Washington card the best? Check out his position.


Now check out the back. Even his stat lines are different, adjusted to reflect his unique position in baseball history.

Finally, here is a "Joy of a Completed Page" - my first completed page of '75 Topps.


More to come as I go through the second lot of my "Storage Wars" cards tonight.

I'm going to take a break from my recap of some of the top stories of the off-season because in the mail today I received two packages from eBay. As many of you know, I'm collecting the 1975 Topps set because it's my "birth year" set. With the '75 set are three cards that I consider the crown jewels - three Hall of Famers, two in the sunrise of their careers, and one in the twilight. Of course, these are Robin Yount and George Brett's rookie cards, and the Hank Aaron Card #1 commemorating his 715th home run and the breaking of Babe Ruth's record.

It would be pretty easy to collect the other 657 cards in the set and not have to spend too much. The trick, I think, is not to overpay on Aaron, Brett and Yount. Of course, if you were in to PSA 10s and all that crap, you'd need to spend a pretty penny on the crown jewels. I'm not about that. My '75 set is in a binder, and, unlike my modern-day sets, I like this one having a bit of character. No creases, thanks, but I don't mind the rounded corner or bubble-gum stain here and there, and many of the checklists I got so far have been marked.

So with that in mind, I'm happy to reveal the first crown jewel that I have acquired - Card #223, Robin Yount:

Earlier I had posted about how I am trying to accumulate 1975 Topps cards. That's because it's time I started compiling the birth year set. I still don't have much interest in collecting vintage of all stripes, but '75 Topps holds some particular significance. I have no idea how long it will take, and I'm scared of the number of big-ticket rookies (such as George Brett and Robin Yount) that are in the set. And before you ask, no, I have no plans to collect any of the mini cards. The regular set will be enough for me.

I had mentioned that the Earl Williams was my first 1975 card. Turns out, that wasn't true. While digging through my collection, looking for Cal Ripkens for a trade, I found another Oriole:

Yes, it's Birds all-time favorite Elrod Hendricks in a classic 1970s catcher baseball card pose. The card, as you can tell by the scan, is in quite good shape. I got it in a job lot of Orioles cards last May or June. I think it's a good start to the collection.

And with that, I'm off to eBay to find some more lots.With only five '75ers in my collection (and four of them stored in a warehouse in Dureya), I have a lot of holes to fill. Wish me luck!

Here's a list of the current outstanding trades I have on the Diamond Giveaway site. See if you can pick out the theme:

Yes, I have (unofficially) begun work on the birth year set. I've decided to collect as many 1975 cards as I can, then get them shipped at the end of the giveaway. Right now, I have one '75er in my collection (Earl Williams), but I hope to get more by trading up my '76 and '77 cards or even trading down '73s and '74s. We'll see.