The modtastic superpimpin' 1970s op-art baseball card thread [PIX GALORE]

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http://www.usatoday.com/sports/gallery/topps/1972.jpg

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:10 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.toptown.com/hp/66/maz71t.jpg

dig the Helvetica lowercase and the big honkin' Eurostile

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:11 (twenty-one years ago)

i had a feeling this was a nate detritus thread! i know fuck-all about baseball so i'll just sit back and watch.

― joday (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:13 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/autoweek/johnodom.jpg

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:13 (twenty-one years ago)

You don't need to know much about baseball to know that dayglo pink + canary yellow + sky blue = chicka-chicka-bowmp-bowmp

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:14 (twenty-one years ago)

uh huh!

― joday (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Card design got a bit conservative and plain for the rest of the decade, but then in 1982: BLA-DOW, it's all George Lucas swooshy

http://www.davekingman.com/82t.gif

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:19 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www2.odn.ne.jp/~cbm94570/rollie1977tp1.jpg

― Marcel Post (Marcel Post), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Gotta give basketball some love

http://hipsterdetritus.blogspot.com/maravich.jpg

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:24 (twenty-one years ago)

http://hipsterdetritus.blogspot.com/kareem.jpg

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

I should also give ups to the bizarre card designs of the late '80s

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/autoweek/josecanseco.jpg

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I used to collect in the late '80s/early '90s and I probably have a 1992 Topps Derek Jeter draft pick card lying around somewhere; too bad the market went south and it's only worth about $10

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:38 (twenty-one years ago)

'72 Topps Baseball Cards are some of my most favoritest graphic design ever: psychedelically garish colors, 3d Art Deco retro font, and a whole bunch of very odd, very intimate face shots taken from the ground-up, probably to mask both the uniform and any cap logo in case the player gets traded. Plus it marks a moment when baseball hair and facial hair are starting to get long and absurd but not shaggy and unkempt the way they do in the late '70's/early '80's. The '85 series is awesome, too: lots of bit of nice, solid color.

Absolutely terrible: 1978. Team names are in an unforgiveably wussy script, and sometimes in hot pink, too!

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Hot pink is a good color, but you don't marry it to script unless you're doing, I dunno, a lipstick ad or something.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 19 December 2003 18:46 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.oldbaseball.com/hom/bill_buckner2.jpg

― kephm, Friday, 19 December 2003 18:57 (twenty-one years ago)

...to mask both the uniform and any cap logo in case the player gets traded.

And when that happens...

http://myphilliesheaven.homestead.com/files/CARLTON72.JPG

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 19:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I imagine that being stamped on the card with a tremendous metallic CLANG

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 19:10 (twenty-one years ago)

heh. I want baseball cards to get x-ed out when they get traded, just like in the Prisoner

"I will not be stamped, spindled, filed...etc!"

― El Santo Claus (Kingfish), Friday, 19 December 2003 19:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Is there an online Beckett?

― Dean Gulberry (deangulberry), Friday, 19 December 2003 19:20 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.fsu.edu/~crimdo/images/pirates/ellis.jpg

― Nemo (JND), Friday, 19 December 2003 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Not a baseball card, but still appropriate:

http://www.bobpeak.com/artwork/time/0226.jpg

― Nemo (JND), Friday, 19 December 2003 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

light orange + powder blue = WTF

― El Santo Claus (Kingfish), Friday, 19 December 2003 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.story-lovers.com/res/buscards/spitzer.jpg

― may pang (maypang), Friday, 19 December 2003 19:49 (twenty-one years ago)

There is an online Beckett, but I think it costs a membership fee to check the prices.

― Leee Marvin (Leee), Friday, 19 December 2003 21:32 (twenty-one years ago)

One new wrinkle that I think might be a salve upon the bloated saturation of the late 90s/early 00s market is that Beckett has come up with a system for collectors to trade "stock" in particular cards, so that even a kiddie with a $10 budget can get something out of the 1 out of 10,000 insert. Then again, it might just be another form of ripping off collectors.

― Leee Marvin (Leee), Friday, 19 December 2003 21:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Nate, can I have a talk with you?

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 19 December 2003 21:37 (twenty-one years ago)

So I dug around a bit in my baseball card archive (a shoebox; cards are somehow kept in fine condition tho) and found a few interesting things from 1992-1996 or so:

The aforementioned Topps Derek Jeter draft pick card
Not one but two Manny Ramirez 1992 draft pick cards
A Todd Helton draft pick card
A buncy of weird glossy cards with gold and silver embossing and holograms and crazy bullshit
These weird "oversized" cards that were about 1-2 inches "taller" than normal baseball cards, including a Kirby Puckett; these probably failed spectacularly since they didn't fit into standard card sleeves and might actually be worth something in mint condition if their size prevented them from being easily preservable
A ton of Bip Roberts cards for some inexplicable reason

Sadly, none of them are really worth all that much.

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Friday, 19 December 2003 22:35 (twenty-one years ago)

So are we going to compare sizes? (Of our collections?)

― Leee Marvin (Leee), Friday, 19 December 2003 22:36 (twenty-one years ago)

http://users.adelphia.net/~retorba/funny/75gamble.jpg

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 19 December 2003 23:08 (twenty-one years ago)

http://users.adelphia.net/~retorba/funny/76hillman.jpg

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 19 December 2003 23:09 (twenty-one years ago)

http://users.adelphia.net/~retorba/funny/66mossi.jpg

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 19 December 2003 23:10 (twenty-one years ago)

these are great. I definatelylke the costumes of teh seventies and eighties more than any other era, although the early part fo the century had some nice designs.

― Mike Hanle y (mike), Saturday, 20 December 2003 13:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Dude! Nate I totally remember those "long" cards! Ours just ended up creased and folded over at the length of a regular card and stuffed in the box with the rest.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Saturday, 20 December 2003 13:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Speaking of costumes...

50's/60's uniforms

PROS: Slightly baggy, woolen, classic script or block-lettering, button front. Nice. I remember one Village Voice writer complaining about the return to "classic"-style uniforms saying: "But I don't WANT baseball players to look like car mechanics!" Well, I kinda do.
CONS: They're worn by an alarming percentage of baseball players who are just fecking ugly, or, to be kind, prematurely aged -- these guys did not live pretty lives.

70's/80's

PROS: Polyester. It's clingy.
CONS: Polyester. It's clingy.

90's/00's

PROS: Everybody is BUFF.
CONS: The double deadly taint of postmodernism (boomer nostalgia, really) and the collector's market driving the designs.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 20 December 2003 14:12 (twenty-one years ago)

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