Card Show Top 20 - #9 '60 Spahnnie

After spending several hours trying to figure out what the heck that Charles Dickens card was, it's nice to show off a card that I know exactly what it is. BEHOLD:

1960 Topps Warren Spahn

This was the priciest card I bought at the show. Ten whole smackers for Spahn. An entire Hamilton for the lefty. This was in the bargain box too. The vintage seller had apparently picked up a pile of Hall of Famers in crummy grade condition and was blowing them out. I had a my eye on a couple in a case full of of the scratch & dent sale cards before I found Warren hiding among a bunch of 1960 Topps cards. You can see it's in perfect shape. Corners round enough to have been made by a compass. All the gloss perfectly buffed and scrubbed off. A nice little crease going perfectly through the face of the black and white Warren photo.  Perfectly awful, but perfect nonetheless.

1960 Topps is one of my favorite sets ever. One of the reasons for this is due to a bunch of '60s I bought when I was a kid. The card shop I used to go to in the '80s had bricks of older cards for sale and I'd usually pick a few up. There were usually a bunch from the '70s and a few from the '60s. Remember, in the mid-'80s cards from 1969 weren't even 20 years old yet. It would be like buying a brick of cards from 1997 today. I built a good chunk of my vintage collection through these bricks of commons. Generally, the cutoff for bricks was about 1964. I got a ton of '64 cards in that brick box. Not so many from '63 and earlier, if any. One time though I found a brick of 1960 Topps in there. There were about 50 cards, Wally Moon was probably the biggest star in the lot and they were all in terrible condition. I friggin loved those cards.

Think of any kind of horrible thing that could happen to a card and it happened to one of those cards in that brick. Here's a partial list:

• Massive crease right in the middle of the card - Wes Covington
• Creases everywhere - Faye Throneberry
• Tear in the card - Dick Hyde
• Hole punched through the card - Ray Sadecki
• Paper loss - Larry Sherry
• Paper stuck to the back - Walt Dropo
• Miscut - Del Rice
• Corner nibbled by mouse - Gary Peters
• Written on, then erased his face - Tony Taylor
• Wax Stain - Chuck Tanner
• Water/Mildew stain - Jim Gilliam
• Unidentified gunk - Glen Hobbie
• Tape stains all over the front - Gene Green
• Run over by a truck - Bob Nieman 
• Dissolved in acid - Jim Coker

The best thing about destroyed cards is there is no disincentive to playing with them. What the hell could I do to these cards that hasn't already been done? I couldn't just play around with my hallowed 1956 cards or the 1972 cards that actually had corners on them, but these things I could fling across the room and actually improve their appearance. Combine this lack of fear with the awesomely colorful design, goofy closeup pictures and sweet team logos and this was the most fantastic set ever. So now, if I see a 1960 Topps card is in crummy condition it brings back great memories. How could I pass up the Spannie?

Here's the back, complete with bonus scuffs. Oh, it's 1986 all over again... I do regret one thing about this card. I didn't realize the comic would be so utterly fantastic.

@\/\/\/\!! 

DEM

BUMS

!

Does anyone have a better scan of this? This might have to be my new title image.

The Top 20 List:

#20 Reds' Heavy Artillery

#19 Blue MadDog

#18 Lil' Jimmy

#17 Real Fake '52

#16 First Topps

#15 Bogus Boog

#14 V103 Tree

#13 Sertoma Rico

#12 '55 Finishers

#11 Hey Shiny

#10 What the Dickens

#9 '60 Spahnnie

#8 Lonely '53

#7 Super Chief

#6 Original Frank

#5 Hoops Inspiration

#4 Rocket Robin

#3 Wizard Off Kilter

#2 Shenanigans Were Called

#1 The Holy Grail of Commons