I'll attempt to pick up the slack here by posting the oldest pack this blog has seen to date.
While questing for Robin Yount items elusive enough to have avoided my grasp, I stumbled across this pack with under an hour left in the bidding and a very low price tag, lower than any single 2007 or 2008 packs I've opened recently. The Yount was visible through the rear of the wrapper, and I already have it, but I decided to take the plunge, all the way back to the year in which I was born.
Let's tear in.
Top to Bottom:
29 Robin Yount
231 Mike Flanagan
220 Dave Concepcion NL All Star
204 Lou Brock (Man, does he look cool on this card or what. I can imagine a night on the town in 1978 with Lou Brock, Lou Rawls, and Lew Alcindor. Fun times.)
118 Ted Sizemore
6 1977 Strikeout Leaders - Phil Niekro/Nolan Ryan
47 Lee May
121 Luis Gomez
81 Will McEnaney
168 John Mayberry
Grade: A
I think it's pretty hard to top a ten-card pack with four Hall of Famers. And let's talk about Dave Concepcion for a while here. My sources indicate nine All Star Game appearances, one All Star Game MVP, five Gold Gloves, and four World Series appearances. How is he not in the Hall? Every article I found calls Concepcion the best shortstop of the 1970s. Nine All Star games on the decade's dominant team? It's not like he snuck in as the sole mandatory representative of a basement-dwelling team. On behalf of all Reds fans (which I am not), I demand his placement in the HoF.
That was a lot of fun to open. I'm sure I'll be topped within the space of a week, but I'm enjoying my brief tenure of the title "Blog's Oldest Pack."
Oh, and the 29-year-old gomme balloune? It will not be entering my mouth. You had me at '81 Fleer.
One more thing. For any of you weights and measures nuts, this emmer effer weighs 4 grams.
Blame Canada.
6 comments:
I'm surprised they didn't throw a "Le Retrait sur des Prises Première" on the front of that "Strikeout Leaders" card.
Wow... Nice pack.
I have a mental block about ripping packs older than 1981, so you probably will nave no competition from me for the "oldest pack" crown.
What do you want for the Concepcion? E-mail me jasontcarter at gmail if you're interested in getting rid of it.
That's funny, Just this year I started collecting cards from my birth year. 1980. I just trip out on the thought that i was still in diapers when these guys were flying around the bases.
Ah, fossilized gum. I just picked up one of those clamshell packs of 150 cards at Target yesterday because it had a handful of unopened packs in it, with the three wax being 89 Topps (after I just finished my set), and my wife's first words were, "You are not eating that gum!"
I realize only now that she said eating and not chewing...
But hey, maybe fossilized Canadian gum is different, hmm? It's only 30 years...
Thanks for your piece on Concepcion. He is one of my all-time favorites and agree that his snubbing by the HOF is a travesty. i've heard theories that there were simply too many other HOFers on those Reds teams (Morgan, Bench, Rose - oh wait, maybe not Rose) that they reached an unspoken quota and 'ol #13 got left out. I keep hoping that he'll get in some day.
Great site - I'll be returning often.
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