I've seen images of these Mike Schmidt cards thousands of times, but there's still something inherently pleasing about seeing these four cards together. Continuing with the 2010 Chachi Mike Schmidt Special insert set, card #2 in the 5-card series brings together Schmidt's Topps cards from what I will henceforth refer to as the Star Wars years.The Phillies won back-to-back-to-back NL East titles in 1976, 1977 and 1978, but during those years my world was all Star Wars, all the time. Tonight, my Mom brought over three huge moving boxes filled with my old Star Wars playsets and vehicles. As I removed everything from the boxes, with my 3-year-old son looking on eagerly, I couldn't help but think back to how it first felt, some 30-plus years ago, to play with these toys for the first time. Doug's patience was severely tried each time I slowed down the unpacking process to admire an old Dewback or to try and remember how to open the top of the Jawa Sandcrawler. I get the same warm and fuzzy feeling looking back on these old toys as I do each and every time I see a Mike Schmidt baseball card from the '70s.
It's cool to have the memories stirred by a '77 Topps Mike Schmidt card or a still operational Lightsaber flashlight. But what's even cooler is the new memories created when your son asks you to put together an old rickety Death Star Space Station play set so that he and you can help Luke rescue Princess Leia from Darth Vader.
And may the Force be with you, always.
It seems like there could be demand for a set like this with a bunch of all-time great players, showing their cards through time. If you think about, Topps has now been around for half of baseball history.
ReplyDeleteIt could be a great education on the history of baseball, sort of like some box set I had as a child from Kmart in the 1980s that had all the MVPs for like the previous 20 years in it.
Of course in 2010, it would be packaged with a bunch of sliced up uniforms and bats and sold only in boxes at the local Target for $25.00 a pop and be aimed at the wrong audience.
Topps has ventured into producing a few sets like this with their Archives releases of the early 2000's. These sets featured reprints of the first and last Topps cards of various Hall of Famers and All-Stars.
ReplyDeleteI remember that KMart set well! I believe it was from 1982 and it was the first time I had seen color pictures of a lot of the card sets from the '60s and '70s.