130 American Baseball Cards from 1970

The title of this post is the title of the listing on e-bay UK. That was it. The description was short and sweet too.

" This is a collection of 130 TOPPS Trading Cards from 1970 covering 25 teams

and including all 3 series check lists. Teams are ...The Red Sox,... . They formed

part of a collection from my childhood in Montreal and are in reasonable

condition for their age."

There was also a picture included but a long distance away in an attempt to include all the cards. I watched anticipating a high price, considering there is another seller who regularly sells 6-8 1970's Topps for £2.00, sometimes higher. With a couple of hours remaining I decided to bid, fully expecting to be outbid, and went to bed.
Maybe it was the time or the fact that they were in the UK, but I won! They arrived on Saturday and I was in for another couple of surprises.
Firstly the cards are in great condition, not reasonable. I thought they might be drawn on, have dinged corners, creases, etc, considering the description '...collection from my childhood...' but no. There are a couple of cards in poorer condition, one looks like it was run over by a truck, another looks as if it was pegged to something, a stain (blood perhaps?) on another.
Secondly, I intended to take the Red Sox and trade the rest. When I opened the package on the top was a plastic packet which had the checklists enclosed. I noticed that the boxes had been checked, so I read through..#2 Diego Segui... check, #3 Darrel Chaney..., #4 check, #10 Carl Yastrzemski... check. I quickly thumbed through the cards looking for Red Sox and there it was Carl Yastrzemski, in great condition. Excellent.
Wait a minute. I started to recognise a few more names, Hoyt Wilhelm, Tug McGraw, Sandy Alomar, Sparky Lyle, Reggie Jackson, Herman Killebrew, Eddie Fisher....Slow down Reggie Jackson, the Reggie Jackson... No way. I thumbed carefully through the cards and there it was, Reggie in his A's uniform. Very nice.
This was a really exciting find. A very lucky find. There are plenty of doubles (and triples) so they will be appearing in trades in the future.

Sometimes, just sometimes on E-bay

In the past I've tried to buy just about anything on e-bay, baseball related. As more items became available, I became more discerning.

Around April of this year there was a glut of cards available, possibly a 5p listing promotion. But an auction came up 'Some 70's and 80's baseball cards' and was listed without a picture. For just 99p (plus £1.00 postage) it was a slight risk. Similar I suppose to the blind trades I'm trying to arrange.

If I remember correctly the item description was as brief as the title.

I took a punt and won.

When the package finally arrived I was stunned. There was 24 cards from 1970 to 1992. Amongst the cards were:

1970 Topps #321 Lou Piniella

1972 Topps #72 Bruce Kison

1972 Topps #93 Pitching leaders

1972 Topps #95 Strikeout leaders

1972 Topps #112 Greg Luzinski

1972 Topps #103 Checklist

1972 Topps #520 Larry Bowa
1974 Topps #10 Johnny Bench

1974 Topps #136 Ricky Reuschel

1974 Topps #251 Graig Nettles

1974 Topps #280 Carl Yastrzemski

1974 Topps #315 Ron Cey

1974 Topps #562 Bucky Dent

1974 Topps #610 Dave Kingman

1980 Topps #220 Dave Concepcion

1980 Topps #544 Rick Sutcliffe

1983 Fleer #40 Paul Molitor

1983 Fleer #613 Gary Gaetti

1989 Topps #691 Roberto Kelly

1991 Fleer #524 Tommy Greene

1992 Topps #156 Manny Ramirez RC

and some cards that I have not been able to find anything about

1990 Superstars #2 Ken Griffey Jnr

1990 Superstars #3 Rickey Henderson

1990 Superstars #6 Jose Canseco

It says on the back they were 'limited' to 10,000. Is that the whole set or each card?

The highlight of the package being the 1992 Manny RC and 1974 Carl Yastremski.

However this is not just a random mixture of cards. My only possible conclusion being that the seller of these cards didn't know that some of them were collectable. Are collectable! They knew that they were significant in some way. But why list without picture or a list of the names 'Bench', 'Yastremski', or 'Molitor', 'Griffey Jnr', even 'Canseco'. Odd, very odd.