How About Some Love for 1974's?

[71buc]

The 74 set was the first one I completed buying pack after pack as an 11 year old. The Garvey, Robinson(s), Rose, Reggie, and Ryan are beautiful. However, I always loved the Ralph Garr.

[Northviewcats]

1. Not to difficult to get NM cards, especially when compared to the 1973s
2. Winfield rookie
3. Washington variations
4. First traded set?
5. Hank Aaron specials
6. Lots of great action shots of Hall of Famers: Ryan already mentioned, but I love the Reggie Jackson, Cepeda & the Killebrew card
7. Attractive framing with the adjacent banners top and bottom
8. Red border autographed team cards (a parallel subset before its time)
9. Jesus Alou error
10. I say Apadaco; you say Apadaca

Fun set to collect.

Best regards,

Joe

[ALR-bishop]

Good list Joe

[darkhorse9]

Don't forget the three Dave Freisleben variations.

This set was always special to me, but can someone tell me what was up with the background color on the Billy Williams card. It's got a weird yellow thing going on there.

[ALR-bishop]

Dark---I had just assumed it was a group of the Low Men in Yellow Coats from Hearts in Atlantis taking in a game

[Beatles Guy]

I attempted to put together this set, but lost interest in it. It is my birth year so you would think that putting it together would be a no-brainer, but my OCD kicked in I'm going to put it up for sale here soon in fact (shameless plug).

[Vintagevault13]

Love this thread. I just completed the 74 set. It holds a special place in my heart and memory because it was the first year I began collecting cards. I spent countless hours that summer looking at the cards and absorbing the stats. Sold the (near complete) set in 1980 and immediately regretted it.

[Tomman1961]

At age 12 in 1973 I bought like crazy. It got better (or worse) in 1974. As Rusty Staub is my all-time favorite, I love his pose. He was not in 1972 nor 1973. Now this pix of him in 1974 strikes me funny. Looks to me like the umpire just made a bad call. And Rusty is staring at him and thinking "W T F. Are you kidding me? I do love 1974. I finally finished it at a show in abut 1982 when I acquiored the ellusive Rick Wise. Probably the first Topps set I ever finished

[rigginsfan]

I just put this set together last month and loved looking at all the action shots while picking though boxes of '74 commons trying to find the cards with the most vibrant colors. My set is strong nm/mt and gorgeous.

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by Northviewcats

1. Not to difficult to get NM cards, especially when compared to the 1973s
2. Winfield rookie
3. Washington variations
4. First traded set?
5. Hank Aaron specials
6. Lots of great action shots of Hall of Famers: Ryan already mentioned, but I love the Reggie Jackson, Cepeda & the Killebrew card
7. Attractive framing with the adjacent banners top and bottom
8. Red border autographed team cards (a parallel subset before its time)
9. Jesus Alou error
10. I say Apadaco; you say Apadaca

Fun set to collect.

Best regards,

Joe

All of these factors are what led me making '74 the first set I decided to put together(master). Definitely one of the most interesting sets that Topps ever made, in terms of variations and subsets..

As far as the traded set thing. Yes, it was the first stand-alone traded set. I find it interesting because of the way they numbered them as sort of a counterpart to the standard card.. Off the top of my head '59 might've been the first year that they fooled around with traded/optioned variations. I think '54 Bowman had a coupla traded variations as well..

[Rickyy]

Originally Posted by 71buc

The 74 set was the first one I completed buying pack after pack as an 11 year old. The Garvey, Robinson(s), Rose, Reggie, and Ryan are beautiful. However, I always loved the Ralph Garr.

I was just like Mike...this was the first one I attempted to complete pack by pack... last regular card was Dave Sells that I actually had to trade a friend for...it was conducted on the porch of his grandma's mobile home park... on a nice summer afternoon nice memories! Later on...went to complete the master set by getting a 1974 Washington Nationals Dave Roberts at a card show some 20 years later...

Ricky Y

[Rich Klein]

but one of the checklist cards (263, 273?) was really tough to find and I never had any stock of that card and always was being asked for that card back in the day.

And in NJ, the Randy Jones WNL Card was for some reason much tougher than the other cards -- now the cards in the 300's are tough as well

Rich