1972 Topps In Action Cards

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Posted By: CN

I was sorting through my 1972 set when I realized that the Cardinals,Orioles,Indians and Rangers have no In Action Cards while the Giants,Mets,Yankees and a few others have about 10 a piece. This doesn,t make sense since the Cardinals had Gibson,Brock,Carlton,MVP Torre and other stars and the Orioles just went to the World Series with the Robinsons,Powell,Palmer and Cuellar. It just struck me as strange and was wondering if there was a reason for this.CN

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Posted By: Anthony N.

The only thing I can think of is that Topps was based in Brooklyn and usually shot at Shea or Yankee Stadium, so maybe they had more images of the Yanks and Mets to chose from. Or it was just hometown bias, and that extended to the Giants. Haven't flipped thru the set in a few months but I seem to remember at the time we were all upset by the lack of Dodgers.

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Posted By: CN

Anthony, you are probably right about the images being shot in New York. I would have thought a company as large as Topps would have countless photos of all the players but only shows that with the technology back then they probably limited their photos to keep costs down. I counted 3 Dodgers in the action series,Haller,Osteen and Maury Wills. CN

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Posted By: Todd Schultz

about the NY connection. My recollection is that the prior year, the few "action" shots all or mostly were all shot in NY too.

Also, the Rangers were new in '72, and any pics obtained, except maybe in the latest series, would likely have been limited to old Senators shots. Despite their fondness for the airbrush, Topps maybe opted out on the Rangers for that reason.

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Posted By: Elm

Some of those "In Action" cards are my all time favorites, especially the Tito Fuentes, Bobby Bonds and a bunch of the Mets. I would of loved to see the players you mentioned. What a missed opportunity.

I wish someone from the 'glory' days of Topps would've written a book that illuminated the inner workings of the company. Besides the question you asked here, I'd love to hear about the logic behind what cards they chose to print or who came up with the designs. etc. I would love to get some insight into the variations they created over the years, like the manager variations of 1973 or the pose variations of 1962 and other years. I am fascinated by these seemingly random events.

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Posted By: CN

I went through my set last night and there are 11 Mets cards,10 Giants cards and then there are several teams with 5 cards,Athletics,Yanks,Pirates and Reds and no cards of the Astros,Indians,Cards,Rangers and Orioles and 3 teams with 1 card a piece. I just wonder if this was a personal bias since it makes no sense for a National issue.CN

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Posted By: John Moran

My (weak) theroy why there are no Orioles IA cards is because they were featured on the W.S. cards in 1970, 71 and 72 (althought they only won once), maybe they thought it would be overkill to have IA cards too.