Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Check Out My Cards...That Never Were (My 1976 Topps Traded Project)

"Cards That Never Were" is a recurring series borrowed from many other bloggers.  The latest site I have discovered is When Topps Had (Base)Balls!, a great site dedicated to creating virtual cards where there should have been real cards.  Of special interest to me, is the "1976 Project" he has recurring.
The Topps 1976 set is the first baseball card set I ever had.  I bought it for $8.99.  While it was cool to have the whole set, I did miss some of the fun of opening packs (along with the frustration of having too many doubles).  The 1975 White Sox (who appeared o the 1976 Topps cards) were the first team I followed intently.
I was always a bit disappointed when certain players (bench players etc) did not make it onto cards.  Back then (in the pre-computer age), all you could do was hope that next season, that player would get a card.
In the age of computers, any card can now be virtually created.  In the blogging age, these cards can be posted for all the world to see.
Getting back to my 1976 White Sox team set, Topps printed 22 Topps regular players cards, 5 Traded White Sox cards and 3 multi-player White Sox rookies.
The problem is the Sox used 41 players in 1975   Of those 41 players, 5 (Deron Johnson, Buddy Bradford, Bill Sharp, Tony Muser and Stan Bahnsen) appeared on cards for other teams.  The Traded cards do not really count, because those players did not play for the Sox in 1975.  That leaves us with 11 players needing cards and 3 rookies who could have gotten solo cards.
I have created cards for 9 of those players.  I could not find any decent pictures of Bill Gogolewski (other than his SSPC card, but I did not want to reuse a card) or Chris Knapp.
I upgrade Chet Lemon and Lamar Johnson to solo cards, but I could not find a decent picture of Jack Kucek to upgrade him.
I gave Deron Johnson a card even though he appeared on a card with the Red Sox.  Johnson was traded to the Red Sox on September 21 and appeared in 3 games with them.  Because Topps did not give the White Sox a first baseman and the number placement was so close to another Red Sox player, I believe Topps intended this to be a White Sox card anyway.  The other 4 players appearing with other teams previously appeared with the White Sox, while Johnson had not.  Clearly, this all lead to me correcting all of this by giving Johnson his own White Sox card.
On the cards topic, I need to send a shout out to CheckOutMyCards.com.  COMC is the best place to shop for cards or just to look up cards.  I use CMOC for both.  Millions of cards are pictured and priced on the site.  It is invaluable in purchasing cards, as well as creating these virtual cards.
I also need to send a shout out to The 1975 Topps Traded Project.  The title says "1975," but there are plenty of 1976 Topps cards in there, too, including a 1976 Cy Acosta (ex-White Sox) that I created.  This site has so many cool card creations.  It is a virtual card creator/collector's dream!
In summation, the 12 cards below represent cards that I wanted to see in the 1976 Topps set.  I am still looking for usable pictures of Kucek, Gogolewski and Knapp.

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