While my friends had given up on collecting cards by the time they hit junior high and high school, I was still actively looking for my beloved Orioles. While the earlier 70's provided a little variety with cards from Milk Duds and Kelloggs, the high school years of the middle 70's were great. I could search the grocery aisles for Hostess cards and Royal Crown Cola cans. As a working man, I had some income of my own to invest. One set I loved was the SSPC cards from 1975-1976. Maybe it was their simplicity or the fact that the set contained a few Orioles that Topps hadn't printed cards of yet. Either way, I was impressed with the cards. I think they are still fairly popular and not too hard to find.
Here's the history of the set per BaseballCardPedia.........
SSPC: With the exception of some regional and oddball sets, baseball card collectors in the 1970s had the choice of collecting cards from one company and one company alone, Topps. Topps has a stranglehold on nationally distributed baseball card issues from 1956 throughout the 1970s until Fleer took up the challenge in 1980. But even before 1980, in 1975 to be exact, Mike Aronstein set the groundwork by challenging Topps in the market it had enjoyed to itself for two decades.
Aronstein was an ardent card collector who had put out card sets for several years in the 1970s, mostly minor league sets, but also some special team sets and reprints of some classic sets. His company was called TCMA, which stood for The Card Memorabilia Associates. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the initials also stood for Tom Collier and Mike Aronstein, co-founders of TCMA. From TCMA came the Sports Stars Publishing Co. or "SSPC." SSPC published an early baseball card magazine/advertising vehicle, called Collectors Quarterly. Aronstein decided to become a maverick by testing the baseball card waters by printing an unlicensed 630-card collector's set using the 1953 Bowman set as a model. The '53 Bowman's have always been a favorite of card collectors because of their photography and simple, uncluttered design. Collectors Quarterly, or CQ as it became known, was used to introduce and promote the SSPC set. Incidentally, CQ was edited by a young hobbyist named Keith Olbermann. Yes, that Keith Olbermann. Olbermann was charged with the monumental task of writing material for the backs for the 630-card SSPC set.
The winter 1975 issue of CQ contained a two-page cardboard insert previewing the 1975-76 SSPC set. The 18 cards could be cut apart into singles and represented something of a traded set, as each player or manager changed teams between the end the 1975 season and beginning of 1976.
Here are the SSPC Orioles cards
1975 CQ Preview (Muser listed as an Oriole on back), 1975 Superstars Set of 42 (4 Orioles), 1975 Puzzle Back
1975 SSPC (Sample).jpg 1975 SSPC (Set of 42).jpg 1975 SSPC (Puzzle Back).jpg
1976 Orioles team set
1976 SSPC #1.jpg 1976 SSPC #2.jpg 1976 SSPC #3.jpg 1976 SSPC #4.JPG