My Kind of Cardboard... I Mean Comic... I Mean Booklet.

Before I get into today's post... I think you should be equipped with some background information on me.  Here's five (not so) random facts about me:

#1 - I'd rather read a comic book, than a book.

#2 - I love shopping for bargains.  In other words, I'm cheap.

#3 - I'm a huge fan of vintage sports memorabilia.

#4 - I've been an Oakland Athletics fan for over thirty-five years.

#5 - One of my favorite things to collect are oddball issues.

In short, I love cheap, vintage, oddball issues of Oakland Athletics... especially when they involve comics.  That's why I was pretty excited to find this 1970 Topps Reggie Jackson Booklet sitting in a box of cards under my desk last month.

If you're not familiar with these, they were inserted into Topps and O-Pee-Chee baseball card packs.  Each booklet featured a cover with the booklet number, six pages of comics, and a checklist.

Each comic is a brief biography of the featured athlete.  I'm sure glad that Reggie decided to focus on baseball, instead of football.

I'm even happier that the New York Mets selected Steve Chilcott with the first overall pick in the 1966 MLB Draft.

In hindsight, we now know that Reggie never broke the home run record.  But he did have a solid career in which he pounded 563 round trippers (13th most in MLB history), made the all-star team fourteen times, was the 1973 AL MVP, and was the recipient of two World Series MVP Awards.

But if you're not a big Reggie fan, there are twenty-three other players (one from each MLB team) in the set... including several hall of famers and a booklet of the All-Time Hit King.

It still surprises me that you can find complete sets of these on eBay for under $25... especially when you consider that they're over forty years old.

What are some of your favorite, affordable oddball sets?

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!