A Trifecta of Completed Vintage Team Sets

My collecting focus over the past couple years has been about 25% set building and 75% building my Giants collection.  While I do trade for an purchase modern cards, the vintage cards excite me most.  Recently I have gotten some cards that complete three different vintage sets from three different non-Topps brands.

First up is this 1960 Fleer John McGraw.

Fleer put out an 80 card set of different baseball immortals a year after entering the market with a Ted Williams focused set.  Of these 80 cards, 9 happen to be Giants.  Fleer did a great job of selecting Giants stars from the early part of the 20th century including Christy Mathewson, Mel Ott and Bill Terry.  There is one oddity in this set and that is the Hugh Jennings card.  Mr. Jennings played mostly for the Orioles (and happens to be the record holder for being hit by a pitch the most times in a sesaon and career), managed the Tigers and only coached the Giants but is pictured in a Giants uniform.  This was a fun set to go after.

Here are the fronts and backs of the entire team set.

The next set I completed was the 1961 Golden Press set.  My latest pickup is this Mel Ott card.

I love the picture on this card with his outstretched glove.  I looks like he is playing in a park with nothing but grass and trees surrounding him.  This set is a 33 card set of only HOFers and has 5 Giants included.  These were all relatively inexpensive to purchase and most of the set is minus the big 3 of Ruth, Gerhig and Cobb.  I believe I picked up 4 out of the 5 from the same seller in separate Sportlots auctions and the other on eBay.  I was very please to complete this set, it is my oldest "oddball" team set and I think the cards are very attractive.

The final set I just completed is a big one in my opinion.  I have featured several of these pick ups in the blog over the past couple months and here are my two recent acquisitions.

This is one of my favorite sets of all time.  This is a 320 card set and features 17 Giants.  Each player's picture is shown on a TV set that is framed in wood, I think this is a great design and takes you back to the time the cards were produced.  Even the back is cool with the number appearing in a small baseball glove in the upper left corner. I like the cursive writing of the players name at the top and just the overall design of the back is great.  This Giants team set has a couple of big ones to secure in Willie Mays and Hoyt Wilhelm and I shared the Mays pick up in one of my earlier blog posts.  Here is the complete Giants 55 Bowman set in all its glory.

Don't you hate it when the team set runs 1 card over onto another page?  Oh well, I am still so happy with completing this team set.