McCovey Monday #92 - A Pair of Postage Stamp Cards

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1300 different  McCovey cards since I started collecting him in the late 1980s.  I will show off one of my favorite cards every Monday.  Stretch was one of the most feared hitters of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

I have generally limited my McCovey Monday posts to a single card but with my infrequent posting I am accumulating new McCovey cards must faster than I can get them posted.  It also has limited my desire to pull older cards out of my binders to share.  Today I am breaking my typical mold and sharing pair of cards with a common theme.

I used to be a pretty active stamp collector.  My focus was on US Postage stamps.  I started as a kid and share the hobby with my grandmother - it was a lot of fun to compare our collections and talk about the history showcased in the stamps.  The shift to the self adhesive stamps by the post office, while easier on the consumer, took a lot of the fun out of it for me.  The stamps became harder to separate from a sheet and more challenging to mount in a stamp book.

When Topps began using postage stamps on cards a few years back it blended my two hobbies and while I saw a lot of negative reactions to these manufactured relics, I have always enjoyed the cards.

Last year, Topps put out a set featuring 15 members of the 500 Home Run Club in the Update set. I was happy to see Willie McCovey featured in the set.

The cards feature a postage stamp from the year the player entered the 500 HR club, in Willie's case it was 1978 - I remember the moment well.  I like the design of these cards, they look classic with a great subject.  With the print run on these being 375 cards, I have thought about chasing the entire set but never took the plunge.

My second card to share is this McCovey out of 2017 Topps Heritage:

This is the 3rd year in a row where Willie Mac has been featured on a Heritage stamp card.  Each year they are limited to just 50 copies.  This is the first year I have added one to my collection.  All those Heritage master set collectors have really driven the price of cards like this higher than I like to spend but I jumped on this one right after the set was released and got it for a fairly reasonable price.

This card features a stamp from 1968 which coincides with the set featured in the Heritage release.  It is a well designed and a great addition to my McCovey collection.

It is pretty cool when my two hobbies collide and my favorite player gets featured in the stamp/card set.