The Lost Box of Total Awesomeness - ¿Qué?

Ok, after long last we have truly stepped in the realm of TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME. This is the part of the movie where Danny putts, the Sta-Puft Marshmallow man shows up, Han Solo swoops in and shoots Vader's ship and the evil nazi dude opens the ark. We have now reached the portion of the box with...

OLD TOPPS CARDS

Yeaaaaaaaah boooooooooy! You thought I was blowing smoke up yer arse with all this awesome talk eh? See, I told you this box was awesome. There are no less than 53 cards in the box from the years 1959 to 1968. Finding just that right there, without all the other stuff in there too, is undeniably grade-A certified Total Awesome.

Here's how I got all the cards in this post. Back in 1987, I got a birthday gift from my aunt. The gift was two tapes; The Joshua Tree by U2, and Elton John's Greatest Hits. She got the U2 because the guy at the store said that's what teenage boys were listening to then, and Elton John was her favorite artist. Let's just say I was not entirely interested in these musical choices. I didn't start liking U2 until college and Elton, um, I wasn't really into the "Sad Songs Say So Much" era of Elton. I took them back to the mall to trade them in for some Weird Al or maybe a George Carlin tape and lo and behold, there was a card show that day! Forget music, I wanted cards. I return them both and get 25 bucks in my greedy little hands. I go out to check out the tables and this guy comes up out of nowhere and offers me a 1953 Jackie Robinson card for 25 bucks. I turned him down and he want away, never to be seen again. This is one of the great regrets in my life. In my defense, he wasn't a seller at the show, just some guy. For all I knew he had just pilfered the card off a table and if I had bought it I could have been thrown in the pokey for being a card thief. Besides, I only had three bucks in my pocket and I wanted to check out all the tables. Really, scrounging around the cards at every single table is the true joy of going to a card show. So I turned him down. I missed out on a 1953 Jackie Robinson card. I am such an idiot.

Anyway, ennui aside, I now had free reign to look around at all the tables. One guy had 100 count plastic boxes filled with cards for a couple of bucks each. This is my kind of deal. I looked at every one of them, most were filled with cards from the '80s but there was one Dodgers box that had an older card on top. I recognized it was from the '60s and there apopeared to be more of them in the box. I grabbed it along with a couple more of those boxes and paid the man. I also found a few cards here and there, maybe even some packs and blew threw my birthday money at the show. A big pile of cards was much better than one Jackie Robinson card* which was a hell of a lot better than a couple of tapes. Here are the old cards from that box.

Six 1962 Topps cards

#11 Tom Morgan - This is the only LA Angel in this post. I'm not sure how he was able to sneak into the Dodgers box.

#32 John Roseboro - Al all-Star cather for the Dodgers, he's best remembered nowadays for his fight with Juan Marichal.


#108 Willie Davis - Longtime Dodger center fielder who had speed and power.

#175 Frank Howard - He is remembered more for being the Washington Senators' slugging All-Star, but Frank started his career with the Dodgers.

#190 Wally Moon - A charter member of the National Eyebrows Hall of Fame. Oh, he could hit a ton, too.

The 1962 sets is one of the great ones and these are some really solid Dodger players from that set. Let's check out the cartoon on the back of Wally's card:

Sera.. Sera... SE FUE!

Wait, what???

That's Spanish! These cards are in Spanish! What the hell is going on around here?

Did you know that in 1959, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1967 and 1968 Topps made cards for sale in Venezuela?

Well you do now. All the old cards from the '60s in that grab box were Venezuelan issues. I guess the dealer thought he was pulling a fast one by fooling me with these oddball cards instead of the real things. Boy, was I a dope! Of course nowadays these cards are much much harder to find than the regular 1962s and they book for about 10 times more than a common card. Here's another back:

Aww, these cards were owned by Oswaldo. Thanks Ozzie, I've taken good care of your cards. Except for the whole "losing them in the basement for 10 years" thing. Here's some more Venezuelan cards:

Fourteen 1964 Topps Venezuela cards

#14 Dick Nen & Nick Willhite Rookie stars - Nen played 6 seasons for a .224 career batting average, Willhite pitched 4 years and ended up with a 6-12 record.

#51 Pete Richert - Pete hung around the league as a reliever long enough to win a World Series with Baltimore in 1970.

#101 Walt Alston - Hall of Fame manager for Dem Bums won 4 World Series including the only one in Brooklyn.

#137 - 1963 World Series Game 2 - Willie Davis hits a 2 run double in the first inning at Yankee Stadium, which is all the Dodgers needed that day.

#138 - 1963 World Series Game 3 - Jim Bouton and Don Drysdale have an epic pitching battle as the Dodgers win 1-0.

#140 World Series Champs - A recap of the Dodgers' sweep of the Yanks.

#214 Ken McMullen - Ken wasn't a great third baseman, but he was good enough to play for 16 years.

#291 Phil Ortega - The Dodgers must have had a special one way flight from LA to Washington, because this is the third or fourth player in this group who played for both the Dodgers and the Senators.

#353 Wally Moon - Just. Look. At. Those. Beautiful. EYEBROWS!!! They're like Groucho Marx, Frank Zappa and Brooke Shields all rolled into one!

The 1962 set was the only Venezuelan product that was printed in Spanish. 1964 Venezuela is easily differentiated from the American set by the back:

Instead of having a pink back, the cards are printed in black and white. Instead of a scratch off answer to a trivia question, the answers are printed in red:

Oddly enough it still has instructions to rub a coin over the answer to reveal. This is a neat way to see the answers to the questions without scratching up all your old '64 cards. These were the cards that really freaked me out when I opened the grab box. I didn't even notice the Spanish at first but it's impossible to mistake black the black backs. I thought I had gotten robbed at first and had gotten counterfeit cards, but the Spanish on the '62s tipped me off that these were some oddball issue. There's one more set of Venezuelan cards to show off:

Two 1962 Topps Venezuela cards

#13 Lou Johnson - I only got Lou from the '66 set. This set is really tricky. Check out the back:

This is the big difference between the 1966 American and Venezuelan sets: No gloss on the front and the ink on the back is a little bit darker. That's it. Other than that they are identical other than the 15x book prices. If I hadn't gotten the other ones in the box that were obviously not normal I would never have noticed these. So of you have any weird looking '66 cards that are dark with no gloss you might have a Venezuelan card.

If there are any hard core Dodger collectors or aficionados of Venezuelan cards out there I do have a few doubles I could trade. If you offer me something I need from here, I'll be all ears. I'm probably never going to see another one of these cards as long as I live though, so super serious collectors only.

So was that Awesome enough for you? Was that the Awesomest? YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET! I have something coming up for you that will amaze and astound you. But first, a few cards to warm you up. Up Next - SIXTIES ODDBALLS.

* OH I AM SUCH A FOOL