Orientation...Not that There's Anything Wrong With That...

(Just a quick note...this is the 300th entry to this blog. Hopefully, there's enough gas in the tank for 300 more...)

 A couple of months ago, I ran an entry about the 1971-72 Topps hockey set. As part of my position writing content for the Cardboard Connection Website, I am learning new things about sets that I never knew before. Among those are the various hockey sets that were totally off my radar as a young collector but really need to be given more exposure, because the cards have a history that stretches back even farther than football or basketball when it comes to mainstream issues.

Beginning in 1968-'69, Topps and O-Pee-Chee began issuing separate hockey sets. While OPC generally had the larger set and featured many more stars, the designs were largely shared, except that the OPC cards were bilingual and were generally printed on lighter cardboard stock (and had a "Made in Canada" copyright line). There was a big difference in the designs when the 1971-'72 set rolled around. Let's take this card of a legendary goalie:

The front design was the same between 1971-'72 Topps and OPC. This card was #45 in both sets. That was common in some years, but it wasn't always a consistent thing.

Now, here's the Topps back:

Notice the back is oriented vertically. Since Dryden was a rookie, it's not obvious that the set was the first to use year-by-year career stats on the back, instead of a simple previous year/career line used nearly every year before this. A lot of yellow is used on the back as well.

Now, here's the O-Pee-Chee back:

The words are the same, and so is the cartoon. Both have French translations added to the back. However, the back is laid out horizontally, with the elements in a different location. The cartoon is larger and clearer. The stats are similarly year-by-year (though that still can't be seen in Dryden's example). And no yellow at all is used here. It's one of the few cases where Topps' back is brighter than the one used on its OPC counterpart.

Cool Cardboard Creations

One of the charges that has been leveled at Topps during its periods of monopolization over the card industry is the fact that many of its designs began to get generic -- some would say "stale" -- as the years went on. There is a lot of merit to that suggestion (and I really wish the Topps people could see this and take it to heart...but I am not going to hold my breath).

However, I came across this card during my current job of writing material for the Cardboard Connection Website:

This is the design of the 1971-'72 Topps hockey set. It features a player picture superimposed over a solid-colored background and the set inside a circular "frame." The team name is designed to have an upward curve that really gives it the look of something you would expect from the early 1970s.

Here's what the back side of the card looks like:

While better colors could have been chosen, there is a very important feature on these cards: for the first time, Topps used year-by-year statistics on the backs. For many years, they only used the stats from the previous season and only began adding the accumulated lifetime numbers in the 1969-70 set.

This was also the first year of these cards:

The first six cards of the set featured the leaders in several statistical categories. Topps had included a Leaders subset in its baseball sets for years; however, the other sports' sets were smaller and didn't get them until the early 1970s.

One card in the set was a checklist, which allowed the collector to keep track of all the 132 cards in the set:

It uses the same curved design that was given to the team name on the base cards.

Ever since Topps and O-Pee-Chee had begun to issue separate sets in 1968-'69, the OPC issue was always larger and more "complete," while the Topps set was normally an abridged version. However, this year was a little different: the Leader cards above were only included in the Topps set, as was a base card of "Mr. Hockey," Gordie Howe. As a result, Howe's card is treasured even by the collectors who rarely venture away from OPC hockey.

That Doesn't Look Right...

Let's switch gears and show a couple of vintage basketball cards today.

While doing another project, I came across a few cards that looked a little strange. Here's a card of Jerry West from 1972-'73:

No, this isn't an All-Star jersey...

Jerry West was a heck of a basketball player. When he retired, he became one of the top executives in the sport. He's not the kind of guy you'd expect to just put on his shirt backwards.

But he wasn't the only one:

I'm #1! I'm #1!

This 1971-'72 Topps basketball card of Oscar Robertson also features a backwards jersey.

In the early days of making its basketball cards, Topps got the rights to feature the images of the players, but not the team logos. Therefore, they weren't able to shoot the front side of the jersey unless it simply had the city name on it. Since the cards above featured players wearing their home threads, they either had to place a basketball in front of the logo or turn the shirts around.

The lack of permission to use team logos in those first few years is also the reason for having so many posed shots then, as well. Fortunately, the permission was eventually obtained and Topps was able to use game action photos a few years later. That was a lot better than what football fans put up with for the rest of the decade.

But that's a post for another day.