1974 Topps Set - My New Baseball Card Blog

I have a new blog I just started, 1974 Topps Set.  This blog is chronicling my collection of 1974 Topps cards.  Although I started collecting in 1971, the '74 set is the first I went wild on, when I was just ten.  I'm scanning each card in my set, and I have nearly all of them.  If you enjoy baseball cards, take a look.

Baseball Cards - Poses vs. Action Shots

Long lost in the art of baseball card photos is the pose. As players got richer due to free agency back in the late 70's and 80's, the tendency to go along with scheduled photo shoots for baseball cards diminished. What once was a rarity and often given special attention in a card set - the action shot - became the norm. After all, what could be better than a shot of your favorite player taken while in action?

Well, I prefer the still photo, the pose. Some of the classic shots in baseball card history were because of the pose. I still remember this shot of Bob Oliver, first baseman for the Royals, from my childhood.

Recently, our four year old went with a friend to a Giants game. He bought a Topps Giants card set at the Dugout Store. While looking through the team set, I discovered Randy Johnson's 2009 card. His was the only one in the set that was a pose shot. It wasn't an action shot. I am truly glad to see this card. It will be valuable for me for a long time to come.

Decline Of The Baseball Card Hobby

A few months ago I decided to look up the value of some of my baseball cards. My most valuable card, as far as I know, is a 1975 George Brett mini rookie card. The mini set was a Topps experiment on the west coast that never took hold. Those cards are worth more than the standard size. Last I checked, this card was worth about $750 ten years ago. Surely, I thought, it would be worth more today.

Not so. I found many of them on various internet market sites like eBay. The max asking price I found was $100 for a card in excellent condition. I don't know whether the price went down because the supply went up. By the supply going up I mean that the average card holder now has an easy way to market the card on the internet. In the past, trying to find a card for sale would have been tougher, maybe limited to seeking out a dealer. Also the glut of companies and various card series coupled with a lack of interest from the younger generation might have contributed to this. Nevertheless, it isn't worth what it used to be. Maybe that's good because I can keep it instead of selling it to get some much desired cash.

Baseball Cards

I collected baseball cards when I was a kid. It started in 1971, and Topps were my favorites, and almost the only brand I ever collected. In Little League, we bought cards at the snack shack after games. My fever pitch year was 1974 when I collected the entire '74 set through individual packs. In college in the 80's I collected old cards to fill in voids. I preferred commons to stars because I could get so many more cards.

My most valued card is a 1975 George Brett rookie card. It was a part of the mini-size set issued on the West Coast and is more valuable because of it. I almost threw all my mini cards away at one time because they always fell out from a handfull of cards. I always refused to put baseball cards in my bicycle spokes. I used playing cards instead.