he made a marc on my collection

i read the news yesterday that marc hill passed away on sunday. he never played for the dodgers, but i knew about him because he played for the giants when my fandom was beginning, and because he was featured prominently on steve garvey's 1979 topps card

my neighborhood friends and i were enamored with this card when we first pulled it from packs. the 1978 topps set (the first that i collected) had most of the dodger cards featuring candid, spring training, pre-game, or posed shots. this card featured some honest to goodness in-game action (sort of) and we loved it. we quickly identified the giants' catcher as hill, who caught the majority of the nocal's games in 1978.

garvey and hill don't look like they are looking at the same thing. hill seems to be looking into the giants' dugout (it was on the first base side at candlestick) for a sign. garvey seems to be looking further down the line. anyway, that card example is a bit worn; here's a nice 1979 o-pee-chee card

there was no baseball reference back then, so i don't think we ever even thought about when the photo might have been taken. today, i looked at the website and see that may 27, 1978 was a day game at candlestick (garvey is wearing the away grays) as was august 5, 1978. it could have been either one of those games. it's not spring training, as the giants trained in scottsdale while the dodgers were in vero beach back then.

hill was kind enough to sign one of his 1978 topps cards

for me through the mail many years ago. i wonder if he would have signed a 1979 garvey card, too.

rest in peace marc hill!

apathy in the uk

on saturday i showed some cards i had received from madding, and now today i am goint to show a couple more. in an earler pwe, kerry sent a few cards including this 2022 topps uk freddie freeman 1997-98 merlin premier gold redux card

along with regular old brusdar graterol

and max scherzer cards

from the 2021 topps uk release.

i was actually in the uk for a couple of weeks last fall, and seeing these cards arrive, along with my failure to purchase any cards while actually in the uk, inspired me to add a few to a recent comc order.

here's clayton kershaw's 2022 1997-98 merlin premier gold redux card

along with a 2021 topps uk 1978-79 redux cody bellinger card

that last one gives off strong 1977 topps baseball vibes.

i also had one topps uk card sitting in my scanned folder waiting for this post, apparently. it's a 2020 topps uk clayton kershaw card

i did keep an eye out for cards during my time abroad, but saw only a few pokemon packs for sale at a tesco express (or was it a boots?) in london. i did come across some tobacco cards at a christmas market

that were all matted and ready for framing. i assume that these were all reproductions as they looked nice and were well matted - you could see the fronts and backs of each card. not sure why the backs were visible if the intent is to frame the cards. anyway, the only sport i saw was cricket so i passed.

there wasn't much of a baseball presence out and about, either. i probably saw maybe a dozen items of clothing related to major league baseball, and i would guess that 11 of the people wearing the gear were doing so as fashion rather than fandom. most of the items were yankee hats, too. i suppose this is why there are so many packs of uk baseball available here in the states in those drug store repacks (foreshadowing tomorrow's post).

maybe it's different in japan, given that country's high level of interest in the sport. i have no current plans to go, but if and when i do i would hope to be able to add to my topps japan collection that consists of clayton kershaw's 2021 card

at the moment.

this sort of thing is not new, as you all know. topps has printed and distributed cards in countries other than the us dating back at least to the 1960's. i recently decided to add another topps venezuelan card to my collection, and chose the 1966 jim lefebvre card

for sentimental reasons. the back is pretty typical of venezuelan cards

as they were mostly put in albums by collectors.

i also added another foreign 1960's card to my collection recently - this one being don sutton's 1968 o-pee-chee card

the 1968 o-pee-chee backs are easily discerned from their topps counterparts because of the color

as well as the print tagline. 

finally, i also picked up a psa 9 specimen of steve garvey's 1979 o-pee-chee card

i didn't know that there were any '79 opc cards that centered and clean. they sure didn't look like that in the packs that i opened in southern saskatchewan back in the summer of '79.

i wonder if there were cards to be found in south korea a couple of weeks ago?