Favorite Non Hall of Fame vintage cards

[Archive]

Posted By: Chris

My favorite card is the 1979 Topps Thurman Munson, purely for sentimental reasons. I turned 7 in 1979, and that was the first year I started collecting baseball cards with the intent to get all the different cards I could.

That summer, my family (Dad was in the Navy and was stationed in Virginia) went to New York to visit my grandmother. I was already a Yankees fan, and so were most of my relatives.

When the news arrived about Thurman Munson's plane crash, I was in the back yard playing catch with a cousin. We went to our collections and began looking for Munson's card. My cousin Jimmy found his quickly.

I pulled out my Yankees pile (which was in its own rubber banded stack -- gotta love the days when we still did that), and looked through them. Gossage was there, as were Nettles, Reggie and Guidry. Mickey Rivers and Andy Messesmith were in there. Heck, even Ken Clay and Gary Thomason were there, but I didn't have a Munson.

My cousin immediately got on my case, saying that he had a card that was going to be worth a LOT OF MONEY because there wouldn't be any more Munson cards, and I didn't have one...just the kind of statement you'd expect a 9 year old future juvenile delinquent to say to his 7 year old cousin. At the time, I didn't know better, and I was upset about it.

A day later, I went to the corner store and bought a pack of cards for 15 cents. I opened it like I always did in those days; I quickly removed the wrapper, let the gum slide off the cards and into the wrapper, and threw them both in the garbage. While thumbing through the cards, I saw a single orange banner with the team name "Yankees" (I still look for them first). It was Munson, and he immediately gained a place of honor in my collection (and I still own that very card today, despite its terrible centering).

The card isn't tremendous. The '79 set is not considered one of Topps' best designs, nor is the Munson card an example of sharp photography. In fact, the picture shows Munson -- who was never thrilled about getting his picture taken -- looking away from the camera, off in the distance. Actually, he looks really annoyed that somebody has come to take his picture, and would rather be practicing throwing out runners at second. Despite that, the circumstances of how and when I pulled the card make it my favorite.