What Were You Doing in 1971?

Today I’d like to continue my stroll through the box of cards my neighbor had asked me to look though. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out my initial post here. To see what I found from the 1970 Topps set, check here.

By far, the most cards in the box were from 1971 Topps. That, of course, left ample opportunity to find some cool stuff. Did I find any? Let’s find out.

Of course, there were lots of checklists. Some were marked, some weren’t. It looks like there’s a full set of marked ones, and the rest were left unblemished. Amazingly the unmarked ones weren’t simply tossed out. There are even several copies of the coins checklist, which was an unexpected find.

Bill Mazeroski always makes me smile. I wonder why.

One of the things I love about baseball cards is the ability to go back in time. Here is Red Sox World Series hero Luis Tiant from his Twins days.

Time travels the other way too.

Shudder. Shudder.

Spoiler alert. This is probably the best card I found. Unfortunately, the scanner didn’t crop it too badly.

Unlike the 1970 cards, there were a lot more Hall-of-Famer’s base cards in the set. Of course, they weren’t names Ryan or Celmente. But, they’re still in the Hall.

Of course, there were also plenty of Hall of Famers on the League Leaders cards. The format of the cards is so simple, but I still like it. Plus, the opportunity to get three hall of Famers on one card is hard to beat. For some reason, the number of Johnny Bench cards is just excessive.

More Hall of Famers who led their league in something. Almost as interesting as the cards full of Hall of Famers, are the ones with just the one. How did Alex Johnson sneak by Carl Yastrzemski? I also like how Topps used different pictures each time a player showed up on a card. Lots better than seeing the same card over and over.

Of course, the highlight of the stack is the pile of Red Sox cards. No Yaz, but I guess that’s OK. I wonder what happened to him.

So, much like the 1970 set, there’s nothing to retire on. Lots of great stuff though. Just looking back and enjoying all the great players from that year was well worth the time it took to flip through the box.

I wonder what will happen in 1972.