30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Polar Opposites

One of the greatest things about our hobby is the variety of trading cards accessible to us.  There's just about every imaginable thing out there for us to collect.  Politicians, musicians, trees, birds, food, cartoon characters, movie stars... as well as a plethora of popular sports.

I enjoy collecting a little bit of everything.  But if I had to pick a favorite sport to collect in terms of cards, I'd go with baseball.  It's the sport I enjoyed playing the most as a kid and it's also the sport I started collecting back in the early 80's.

And if you thought there were a variety of trading cards available to collectors... just think about the variety of trading cards within one particular sport.  Today I figured we'd look at six cards that were sent to me by Steve over at 1975 Baseball Cards. and see the diversity that exists among baseball cards.

1976 SSPC #624 and 2005 BBM Touch the Game

First off... you'll notice that the card on the left is nearly thirty years older than the card on the right.  But what you can't see is how much thicker the Johjima is compared to the Winkles.  You would probably need to stack 6 to 8 SSPC cards to match the single BBM.

1976 SSPC #587 and 2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #8

Another thing that stands out between the two cards is abundance of foil on one card and the lack of foil on the other.  I remember jumping all over Fleer Metal cards in the mid 90's.  The 2000 BBM Diamond Heroes set is very similar to that product line.

1976 SSPC #501 and 2001 BBM Diamond Heroes #130

The final thing I'd like to compare is trading card's country of origin.  When I first started collecting I had no idea that people collected trading cards all around the world and that cards were printed in different languages.  These days... I have an entire collection dedicated to trading cards written in Japanese.

And thanks to Steve... I just added three new Kenji Johjima cards to that collection, along with three forty-year old pieces of cardboard.

So what about you...

Where do you fall on the SSPC/BBM trading card spectrum?

I'm a fan of both... but since that's kind of a cop out... I'll say I'm slightly leaning on the SSPC side, because vintage oddball issues are one of my favorite things to collect.

Well that's it for tonight.  Stay tuned for my next post which will go over what I picked up earlier today at the Serramonte Mall Card and Collectibles Show.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

17 comments:

Billy Kingsley said...

The text on the front of the SSPC does not work for me, but I love oddball and obscure stuff as well. If I collected baseball actively I'd collect both

The Snorting Bull said...

I love the Johjima cards. I have a few Japanese cards floating around my collection and have been looking into adding some more. I especially want to find some Seung-Hwan Oh cards.

Anonymous said...

I love both sides of the equation, and I add SSPC and BBM cards whenever I can, but as I have to chose I'd go with the set that features players I grew up watching - 1976 SSPC.

night owl said...

SSPC is so in my wheelhouse that I don't even notice that there's a card next to them.

Tony L. said...

I lean toward the SSPC, but only because I don't have any collections that span into the BBM world. I appreciate both, certainly, and it's fun to see a set I've never seen before.

SumoMenkoMan said...

I love the BBM stuff.....but only because I have a fascination with the Japanese stuff.

sg488 said...

They called them "Pure Cards" back in the 70s,love the SSPC's.

KO Rob said...

If the spectrum was just from vintage to new, I'd definitely lean to vintage. They just appeal to me more.

Mark Hoyle said...

Sspc all the way

BobWalkthePlank said...

It would be SSPC for me

NPB Card Guy said...

It should be obvious from my handle that my preference is BBM but I will say that my preference is not those particular BBMs. I'm not a fan of high end cards and I've always been a huge fan of that SSPC set. Now if you had the Johjima from the 2001 BBM regular set, there'd be no question about which I'd prefer...

Commishbob said...

I'm a huge fan of the SSPC cards. I've been collecting them for years although I've never really tried to chase the full set. I have plenty of Orioles and a big stack of others. Great cards. I also collect Japanese cards but the BBMs just do much for me. I collect vintage Japanese, menko and bromides.

Zippy Zappy said...

Neither. Just to be contrarian.

Steve at 1975BaseballCards.com said...

SSPC :-)

Sean said...

I`d go SSPC. Actually that is more a protest against BBM vote than a pro-SSPC vote though, the heavy text on the front of the SSPC is a real drawback. For Japanese cards I way prefer Calbee over BBM though, they are just way more appealing to me (and you can collect them all the way back to the classic 70s era of Japanese baseball).

Fuji said...

billy - sorry billy, that's my bad. it's actually a scan of the front and back that i stitched together. the front of the SSPC cards have no text on them.

snorting bull - i feel a little ashamed, bc i've never heard of this seung-hwan oh guy. is he sadaharu's brother?

shlabotnikreport - i never watch japanese baseball (unless it's international play), so based on watching players i know... the sspc set blows bbm cards out of the water.

night owl - maybe i should have made the question more challenging and asked whether or not people prefer 1976 sspc to something like the 1976 topps set.

tony l - you make a good point. i've seen my fair share of the sspc set (since i own one). but every year i see fresh new bbm sets from across the pacific.

r laughton - i never would have guessed ;)

sg488 - great piece of trivia. never heard of that before... but they definitely are pure awesomeness.

ko rob - me too. well... at least 4 days out of the week. the other three days i'm enjoying collecting on-card autographs, 90's inserts, and 80's rookie cards.

mark hoyle and matthew scott - looks like sspc is going to win by a landslide

npb card guy - okay... i've gotta find a copy of that johjima. that is one heck of a photograph.

robert andrews - i cheated and just bought the full set of 1976 sspc. i just didn't have the patience to build it. ps. i love me some vintage japanese cards.

zippy - you're such a rebel

steve - could never tell by the name of your blog ;) thanks for the cards!

sean - i like calbee cards too. not sure if i'm ready to say i'd take a calbee card over a bbm, but i do like how they use their food products to distribute their cards.

NPB Card Guy said...

I probably can hook you up with one. Send me an email if you're interested.