1970's Sets.....

Socalguy1967

Any suggestions on where to find 1970's Baseball sets in ExMt+ to NrMt condition. I would also like to find the cards pretty well-centered and sharp corners. I've hit a lot of shops and the few shows we still have out here in California and have not found very much. I have bought sets on Ebay and they are usually no where near what the seller estimates the grade. I realize the sets I'm looking for are going to command a higher price. Anyone have any internet dealings with anyone they can recommend? Anyone on Ebay?

packman

I am working on all of the sets from the 70s. As you know, it is very difficult to put together a uniform set that is centered with sharp corners. For example, I recently opened 3 1978-79 wax boxes and put together a mint centered set. However, the other sets that I have from the boxes are all over the place. Another example is I recently opened a box of 1979-80 and found only 30 centered mint cards. It is difficult. I would recommend that you buy a few raw sets from different dealers and put one set together and sell the remaining sets. It is very difficult because the quality control is not there. Good luck.

David

packman

I forgot. You can try Steve Hart at bbcexchange.com. He sometimes has nice pack fresh sets. He will also send you scans of the key cards.

Bosox1976

I agree with David; buy a few of each set and cherry pick the best, resell the lefttover sets.

71Toppsman isn't bad on ebay, but consensus is that he overgrades by one half to one full grade (which is better than most on ebay).

MooseDog

I'll just give you a little info based on my experience...you will NOT find the kind of sets you are looking for unless you get VERY VERY lucky. I advertise to buy cards locally in the San Francisco Bay area so I end up looking at a LOT of cards...Most 70s sets I have seen are EX at very best. Any nicer ones have been 1974-79 vintage and usually many of the cards have centering issues...the other problem is that the stars or $ cards in the sets either turn up missing (sold off during the 1990s boom) or are off center or in poor condition...I always hear these stories about people running into original owners who kept their cards in mint condition in a closet, but at least in the last 15 years I have not run into any myself, and not for lack of trying.

Forget eBay. I bought three sets before figuring out this was a good way to burn money. Unless it's a seller close to you and you can look at the set in person you risk getting junk for your money.

I bought a 1958 set which was 80% graded and had a lot of extra cards (almost enough for another set) and the cards are in really nice condition - sharp corners and all but so many have centering issues. That was the best of the three sets though.

basestealer

Moose is right. I've been collecting late 70's baseball for a long, long time. I would guess that I've spent more money completing a strict mint 1977 set than I did the 1959 baseball set. The problems are many fold. I'll try my best to address them--
1) Fresh out of a pack, these cards are turds. Cards from cello packs usually have worn corners unsuitable for a high grade set. Wax packs are notoriously resealed, and even those that aren't resealed offer up 2 stained cards per pack, along with the usual centering issues and possible corner issues depending on the source of the wax. Rack packs are the best bet--but finding centered cards in racks is a challenge. Vending boxes are horrible.
2) In addition to the rampant centering problems and corner issues on the cheap, inferior card stock is the malignant printing techniques applied in the 70's. Some cards in all sets are prone to ink smudges, print lines, out of focus, ink runs, and the like. An unopened CASE of '79 Topps baseball might still not yield one strictly mint complete set.
3) Bulk hand-collated sets that you see for sale by dealers, even reputable companies like BBC kid, Dave and Adam's cardworld, Kruk's, and the like are usually overgraded. Expect "NM/MT" sets to be EX-MINT at best. Again, they likely just assembled the sets straight out of vending boxes, which isn't any guarantee of a mint set at all!
4) Buying sets from unknowns (on ebay) you might find near mint commons with the star cards in horrible shape. This way they can advertise that the set "averages out mint", when in reality you've purchased 600 commons and trashed star cards that aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Even the "near mint" commons will be horribly off center with other problems.

So, in my experience, if you drop $300 for a wax box, expect about 50 cards out of that box to fit nicely in a high grade, strict mint set. Just 50. After several wax boxes you might have the set 75-90% complete, with holes that never seem to get filled because there are challenge cards in each of these years where mint examples are simply NON-EXISTANT! Check the PSA pop reports to find out which ones will pose a problem. For those cards, you'll be forced to accept something less than mint to fill the hole. Or wait, and wait, and wait, until you find the right one. It might cost thousands or tens of thousands (seriously) to complete one of these sets. The good news is you can sell your leftovers, but it's still a pain staking process.

The best place to buy an already assembled set is from a true collector that values condition the way that you do. They are few and far between. I recently sold a raw '79 baseball set for $700, which I felt was way too low, but I had a duplicate and figured a higher bid would unlikely be found. In retrospect, I would have gladly paid 10 times book for it had I not already spent years assembling it myself.

Estil

Yes, this is my second (and LAST, no more selling them this time) go-around at getting 1970s sets. Apparently Topps did the best job making the 1978s, as in both cases they were the strongest condition sets by far. The 1979 isn't quite as nice but still pretty good (much stronger centering than usual). The 1976/1977 sets, OTOH, while also strong on the centering, were very overgraded by the seller corners-wise (especially the 1976; almost 1/3 of that set, including a few keys, need upgrades). So I've only gotten 1976-79 so far. And I did try to make very sure to get the best ones I could find. But like the previous two posters have said, it's not easy getting them in proper condition. I have thought about trying to get a second 1976 set (since it's currently my weakest set of the four) and cherry picking from the two, but I don't know if I can afford to plunk down another $200 for it. At least I can probably get around $125ish back from selling the weaker set of the two perhaps?

I hope to also get 1974, and then my favorite, the 1975. If I want to go any further back, I'll probably have to settle for EX/EXMT sets as even mid-grade sets of 1970-72 will set ya back around $1000. But as long as 1974-79 remains relatively affordable, I'll try to get those as close to solid NRMT/MT as I reasonably can.