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Posted By: Chris Counts

From personal experience, I can tell you that in 1970, at least, the Bench card was very tough. That was the first year I went nuts over baseball cards. I was nine at the time. Whenever I got a dime, I bought a pack of cards. In Southern California, the first four series were widely available and pretty evenly distributed and I got them all fairly easily. I never saw series 4,5 and 6 in California. In August, I went back to Michigan to visit relatives. When I arrived, the 5th series was everywhere, and I soon had most of the cards. Then, just before we left for California in September, the 6th series came out and I bought a bunch of them. Getting the Mays card was one of my season highlights! The 1970 Topps Super set was available in Michigan at this time as well ...

When I returned to California, we were still stuck on the 4th series, so I gave up and started buying football cards. I never did, however, forget that I didn't have Bench, who just happened to be the most popular player on the planet that season (he won the NL MVP) ... then one day in December, I came across a vending machine in a grocery store, and there in the display was Bench. My brother and I just went nuts. We begged all my mom's change, and soon we had emptied that vending machine and I had my Bench ...

As for the Robinson, I've alway been skepitcal about the scarcity of any card I see a lot of in nice shape. And I remember someone showing me a stack of sharp-corned '67 Robinsons back in the mid or late 70s. I've always figured that many so-called rare "modern" cards were simply not well-distributed. I also remeber seeing a bunch of sharp-corned '58 Bell Brands, but the fact that you almost never see them might disprove my theory ...