Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Let's look back

The year is 1979. In September of the year I turned 8 years old. I was playing little league for the first time. I started to try and watch the Saturday game of the week. Once in a while you would get a Dodgers game on KTTV channel 11, or an Angels game on KTLA channel 5. I really didn't know who the big names were yet. The Pirates and their crazy uniform combinations caught my eye.

One day I went into a local 7-11 to get a soda and a candy bar. There with the candy was a box of baseball cards. It was the old Topps cello packs that you could see the front and backs cards. On the front was a Pirates car with the cool black and yellow uniform combo. I for the life of me still can't remember who's card it was. I was stoked to think you could get 16 cards for a cool 30 cents. All it took was one pack and a love affair was born.

If you were like me and the 1979 Topps was your first cards, or you were a fan of a team in '79 your blog is here. We will take a card by card look at my first and favorite. What were some of your favorites in the set? Let's enjoy this ride together.

10 comments:

hiflew said...

1979 was a wee bit before my time. My first card was a 1982 Donruss and 1986 was my first year of actually collecting. When I was growing up 1979 Topps was always like 1981 Topps, mostly overlooked. 1980 had the Rickey Henderson rookie and the 78 had Molitor, Trammell, Murray and many others, but 1979 and 1981 didn't have any top rookies at the time (Ozzie was not a hot hobby commodity in the 1980s as you may or may not know). Therefore, I know very little about this set and am looking forward to seeing some "new" cards.

Matt Runyon said...

I'm looking forward to reliving the 1979 set. This was the first set that I bought as a complete set rather than collecting it. I collected from packs every year from 1974-1981 except for 1979. I bought the 1982 set, collected 1983 from packs, and then bought complete sets from 1984 until now. I feel like I missed out on something by buying the set instead of completing it from packs.

Jim from Downingtown said...

I pre-added you to my sidebar a few days ago!

The only 1979 cards I have are the Phillies Burger King set, so I'm interested in seeing the others.

Mike said...

There is something very interesting about this set. I had the pack fever in 1979. My father would bring home a pack for me and my brother at least once a week. I would also spend my allowance on the packs too. It was fun to see what was inside especially if there were Royals cards. It should be fun to read your posts.

Nick said...

Although '79 was way before my time, it's still one of the more underrated sets ever.

I absolutely LOVE the '79 Pete Rose card. I'm also partial to the Bert Campaneris one for some reason (Campy managed to sneak his way into your pic there at the top-center).

Play at the Plate said...

I'm here! We can start now!! I started in '81 and I would have lost my mind to find a pack of '79s. I did "win" a pack of '79 Topps from the Diamond Giveaway site. It was a blast to open.

Chris Stufflestreet said...

Finally glad to see 1979 Topps getting some respect in the Blogosphere. The first wax packs (of baseball cards, that is) I ever opened were from that year.

MCT said...

Glad to see a 1979 Topps blog. This was the first set I collected heavily -- I had gotten a small number of '78s late in the year, but 1979 was my first "real" year of collecting. I know a lot of people aren't crazy about the design, and the color combinations used for certain teams are illogical/jarring, but it will always be a sentimental favorite of mine.

Jim said...

Really looking forward to re-visiting this set!

Kev said...

thanks again for the comment - i went back to page one to get a look at how it started... and i think you are a month older than me, so we have very similar collecting memories!