Harmon Killebrew 1976??
Dgofwinter
Posts: 66 ✭✭
I came across a SSPC card of Harmon Killebrew on the KC Royals. I never realized he played for them in 1975. My question would be does anyone know why Topps did not make a card of Harmon in the 76 set? I believe he retired in March 1976.
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Comments
For a player who retired at #5 all time in Home Runs, Killebrew got very little national respect.
Disgraceful of Topps. Harmon was a feared slugger and one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.
George Brett has a rookie card in that set.
Besides the stand alone Brett rookie, there's also this great dual player card.
I would guess because he was an unsigned 40y/o who hit below .200 the year before.
Topps rarely printed cards of players who it didn't expect to play the following year. Remember the 1967 Koufax or the 1977 Aaron, or even the 1985 Palmer? The 1974 Mays and 1984 Bench/Perry/Yastrzemski were special cases, and the 1973 Clemente was a special case of a different type.
I never understood Topps thinking process. I mean if a player was active in the year, even for half of a season, I believe his final playing statistics should be on the Topps card for the following year. Besides the examples you mentioned, Thurman Munson should have had a 1980 card with his stats since he played until his death in August of 1979. His last card, 1979 Topps, does not have his final career statistics as a player.
Hypothesis: Topps considered cards for a very long time as something to be played with by children. For example, children might make a diamond out of the players currently on the field. At the very most, they would be interested in collecting their favorite Seattle Pilots, not Pilots of yesteryear. As such, it's reasonable to assume that there would be the most interest in active players and, since no one really cares what is on the back of the cards, it doesn't matter what a player's final stats were.
CARD BACKS: While some of your hypothesis may be correct I do think card backs - particularly stats - mattered more to collectors before the internet. In the pre-internet age it was a record of what happened last year. The leaders cards, Topps cup cards and all-star cards are all evidence of this. Unless you bought the Baseball Encyclopedia every year (many of us had a copy but never replaced it with newer versions) or saved the final Sunday paper (the only day of the week player stats were published) baseball cards were your source for stats and fueled the arguments about why or why not Killebrew was better than say McCovey (used these players to stay on topic. My era was a little later). Even in the computer age but not the internet age my brother and I used stats from cards to create teams on Microprose baseball. Admittedly I was a strange kid who loves the numbers of baseball and read the box scores every day (still do read them every day) but I think Topps realized this was a selling point or they would have done something different than career stats on the back of cards. Even today one of their parallels is next gen stats - they would never have come up with that if they didn’t think the stats were part of their appeal.
Wrong, wrong and again, wrong.
Killebrew hit .199 in 1975. He was released by the Royals on 10 November and not picked up. How do you get three wrongs out of him not turning 40 until the third month of the 1976 season?
I know how much you admire him, but by the time the DH came along he wasn't good anymore, and by the time he became a regular DH he was just bad.
I was looking at his stats from a year earlier, when I assume the decision would have been made.
My point was any player with his power numbers should have been "granted" a final card.
His OPS was actually a bit higher in his last season, but we all know he was done as a player.
Have a fricking heart!
Never knew he played for the Royals.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
There have been many far superior players who have come and gone that were not granted a "final card." He should not have been an exception.
That is one of the things I liked about Fleer - they did the final cards with final stats - e.g. Yaz, Bench and Perry in 1984.
Those SSPC cards are gorgeous. How were they issued?
Also consider the fact that at this point, cards were essentially only worth the paper they were printed on. No one was making decisions based on someone caring about these pieces of cardboard nearly 50 years later. It wasn't exactly some prestigious honor to have your likeness on a bubblegum card, it was just something that happened.
I'm guessing that since quality control wasn't even a thing until 1989, there wasn't an excruciating amount of thought that went into many decisions in the bubblegum card world beyond the design, numbering of star players in the set, and active player pool.
Nice custom 76! Would of been a nice one
They screwed him on the front end of his career too with no card in 1957.
There are several Wikipedia entries and some card bloggers that tell the story more on depth, but this is the gist of it from memory.
They were an unlicensed set with neither MLB or MLBPA approval printed by the owners of TCMA. The photographs were taken at Shea by a former Mets employee that had the hookup to get down on the field without much scrutiny, and since Yankee Stadium was being remodeled, their games were also being played at Shea, giving access to players from both leagues. A teenage Keith Olbermann (yes, that guy) was tasked with doing the write-up for all 630 card backs. The design was modeled after the 53 Bowman, and distributed by mail order from a collectibles magazine in either team sets or complete sets. Topps soon filed a cease and desist motion, and it was settled out of court that TCMA must stop production but could sell the rest of their inventory. They are known both as 1975 and 1976 SSPC. I believe the Fred Lynn mentions his ROY award and MVP, and several other cards also offer clues that they were produced after the 1975 season.
Besides this 630 card set, there is also a SSPC card set of 44 superstars that are a bigger size than the standard card. I'm not sure how those were distributed. The backs of those cards were puzzle pieces that when assembled made a larger pic of Nolan Ryan and Catfish Hunter, I believe.
I have a handful of the larger cards somewhere, and picked up the 630 card set roughly 8 or 10 years ago for not much money. I can't recall exactly, but maybe $25-$30. The set is a neat item, I think, just for the photographs and the oddity of it, even if it isn't a licensed item or ever likely to be valuable. If you're a fan of the players and uniforms of the 70s, it's well worth picking up.
quite a few of the players in that '76 SSPC set won't sign those cards because they weren't paid
IMF
Some more highlights from the SSPC set.
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Description
1976 SSPC is a 630-card "collector's issue" released by TCMA. Dubbed the "Pure Card" set, the designed was based loosely on the 1953 Bowman set. The set was available exclusively via mail order and was advertised in the nascent Hobby Media, such as it was in the mid-70s.
Despite the cards bearing a 1975 copyright, the set is considered a 1976 set as it was not released until then.
SSPC was not licensed by either MLB Properties or the MLBPA, and shortly after its release, was sued by Topps. As part of the settlement, SSPC agreed to never reprint their 1976 set, and to never attempt to produce a similar product ever again.
Keith Olbermann, then still in high school, edited the copy on each card.
Distribution
Factory Sets: ($12.99 + $1 S&H)
Team Sets: ($1 + $0.50 S&H)
Not many "far superior" Home Run hitters and probably no superior individuals.
A final card would have been nice.
Killebrew was signing at the Washington Sportscard Collectors show in the late 80's - murmuring around the show was he made several bad financial decisions and really needed the money from the show. This might be an explanation for why he hung on so long? Likely, Topps paid him for a '76 card, but didn't run it in the set.
I'm a big fan of Killebrew, he was great at the show and a great MLBer. Small town kids that made it big, tried to help out those around him and paid a financial price for that support. I love the SSPC set and anytime Topps decided to run a final card like the '69 Mantle, '73 Clemente, etc.
Add Largent to the list of no final Topps card. Largent tried to hang on too long, made it to 100 TDs (only 2 td catches in his last year) and had to hang it up.
I'm a bit confused by the concept of a card with the player's final stats. At least in the early 80s and prior, as far as I could tell, if you weren't expected to be on a roster for a given year, you didn't get a card that year, across the 4 major sports. Kaline, Brock, and Gibson come to mind immediately. If a card with final stats exists, I would guess that would be an anomaly.
too bad Topps didn't issue a Traded set in '75
IMF
I haven't paid enough attention in the modern era...has that "policy" changed? Are players typically getting a "final stats" card in the more recent Topps sets? Since cards are probably all laid out and printed by December, and start being distributed in February, I could also see players who don't announce a retirement until November/December getting one last card by accident. Does anyone know?
kevin
There is a variation of card #593; Nolan/Catfish where his name is spelled 'NOLAND'. The font is a tad bolder. Rumor in the early 90's was the set was somehow reprinted surreptitiously and the proof-reader was sleeping that day.
Well, everyone knew David Ortiz was done after 2016 and he has stats on his 2017 card. Keep inn mind, though, that Topps has had any number of cards of retired, even long retired, players in its sets for years.
Well, sure! The endless parade of Mickey Mantle cards, along with a host of others that Topps has done recently with the SSP and SP variants in the base sets provide plenty of Ripken, Brett, Henderson, etc. cards with complete stats. I think I was thinking more along the lines of a 1988 Reggie Jackson, or a 1994 George Brett...
kevin
@tulsaboy
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Well...duh. (oops, I forgot about that one.)
Well I feel sheepish...
kevin