Saturday, August 22, 2020

Finding greatness in randomness. 1976 Topps Johnny Bench

In a follow up to my post yesterday I wanted to share a small lot that I picked up at an auction at my LCS earlier this month.

It is a seemingly random 4 card lot of vintage baseball cards. There is a 1969 Topps Al Kaline and a 1969 Topps game card of Roberto Clemente. And two Johnny Bench cards, 1976 and 1977 Topps. I think I spent $6.50 on the lot.

Part of me just loves the randomness of the lot. They are however, all vintage and all Hall of Famers. I believe the Clemente is the first game card I have from that set. The reason I bought the lot though was for the 1977 Topps Johnny Bench card. I think it has been discussed on multiple blogs before, but with all the dust in the photo, it is just such a great looking card. For me, I could see this card representing the 1976 Topps set for me, just like the Ted Kluszewski does for me for the 1957 Topps set. Plus I have the Bench rookie card, so maybe I should go after his complete run of base Topps cards from his playing days like I am doing with Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan and Thurman Munson.

What do you think? Is there a better looking 1976 Topps card based on just the photo alone?

3 comments:

  1. It's between Bench and Yaz, for sure!

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  2. $6.50 is a good price for just the Clemente. You did very well on these. Offhand I can't think of a better '76 photo than the Bench; it's not the strongest set for photo variety.

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  3. The 76T Bench is awesome. My personal favorite would be the Sal Bando though. I love that card.

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