This is where things get a little confusing. Up until this point, Topps has been able to follow Dick Allen's career and match the correct teams with the correct year. In the world of baseball cards, this is not always an easy task. When a player is traded or moves from one team to another after the print deadline, you are basically out of luck. Now the card companies just release a "update set" and charge a lot of money for it. In 1975, it was not that simple.Dick Allen "retired" from the Chicago White Sox with 2 weeks left in the 1974 season (I will write about this another time). His rights were traded to the Atlanta Braves during the off season. Haunted by how he was treated in Little Rock during the 1963 minor league season, DA refused to consider going to the Braves and playing again in the deep south. The 1975 MLB season started and Allen stayed "retired" until May, when the Braves traded his rights to the Phillies. With a little persuasion Mike Schmidt and Dave Cash, he returned to play first for the transformed Phillies.
I made two redux cards for the 1975 entry, one for the White Sox and one for the Phillies. Both recognize his place as a starting American League All Star. As you can tell, the 1975 set was very colorful. There was no single color template for each team. I chose the purple & pink combination in honor of DA's long time team mate Tony Taylor.
2 comments:
All these cards are great, but I think the '75 Topps Phillies custom card is my favorite.
Awesome work. The 75 Topps cards is my favorite set of all time. It happens to be the first year I really started buying cards as a kid on a regular basis. But I agree, I think they're the most colorful and appealing set of all time. Wish Topps remained as the sole producer of cards, it's a shame how the industry got muddied. Anyway, great work, love the Philly remake of Dick Allen. Being from STL, I wish he stayed a Cardinal.
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