Inching Ever Closer to the 1975 Topps Set

Late last year I picked up a starter set lot of 75 Topps on eBay for $93, it had 528 of the cards including the Yount rookie.  I quickly picked up the non-star, non-team card, non-checklist cards from my LCS and also added 7 cards I had from my collection prior to buying the lot bringing me to just over 600 of the 660 cards. 

After that I stalled.  I picked up a few cards in Sportlots auctions including the Aaron and Ryan Highlights, Steve Carlton and Reggie.  Picked up a couple at a not so local card shop and through Topps Diamond Giveaway.  I picked up around 15 over a few month period, not too good on the progress side.  A few weeks back I finally landed the George Brett RC.

Less than 2 weeks ago I decided to remedy the situation and found an online cards store with fairly reasonable prices.  I did some shopping with a goal to keep the condition pretty good and for the most part succeeds. I got a couple with wax stains and one team card with a few markings that will eventually need to be updated but otherwise I am pretty happy with the haul.

Here are the first 9:

 This set has a pretty impressive roster of highlights to showcase. Picking up this Gibson and Kaline finishes this subset for me.  In addition to these two there are cards of Hank Aaron, Lou Brock, Nolan Ryan and a second highlight featuring Ryan along with Steve Busby and Dick Bosman.  The only card not featuring a HOFer is Mike Marshall and despite being a Dodger he was a pretty impressive relief picture.  This group of 9 also features 2 base cards of HOFers in Rollie and Bert along with 2 perennial All Stars in Parker and Garvey.  By happenstance, they happen to be one of my favorite non-Giants of this era and my least favorite, can you guess who is who?  This group is rounded up with an O's team card and two of the MVP cards.

Next up we have some more HOF love with the Goose, Lou Brock and Don Sutton. Goose looks odd without his facial hair and to me Sutton and Brock look older than they are in their cards.  The Sutton along with the McClain/Brock from the previous scan are the wax stain cards while the awesome floating heads checklist of the White Sox is the team card with the markings.   Two more MVP cards and some team cards finish up this group.

Finishing up my haul are another team card, another HOFer in Killebrew and two rookie cards.  Manny Trillo and Doug DeCinces were both very solid major leaguers for quite some time and the young Keith Hernandez RC was a nice score.  Never been a big Hernandez fan but I needed the card for the set.

Down to only 8 cards to go and I am going to push to finish this one up in the next few weeks.  No huge cards left, the Mantle and Aaron MVP and Carlton Fisk are the only non-Checklist/Team Card needs left.  Glad I was able to finally knock a chunk off the want list.