Wednesday, February 6, 2008

1969 O-Pee-Chee Thome Insert

Fresh from eBay, here's what the Jim Thome 1969 O-Pee-Chee insert looks like. It's not a pretty card, but it's simple. Jim Thome does look pretty impressive on it. I suppose that kind of confidence comes when you hit over 500 home runs and are a hell of a nice guy.

It may be awhile until I actually see this card in person, as my finances are very tight for now. I may have to hold out on any new product for a short time as well. Unfortunately, bills have to take priority at some point. Once they're paid, then it'll be off to the card shop for me!

When I first heard about Upper Deck doing a 1969 style O-Pee-Chee insert, my immediate thought was, why? 1969 was a boring design for Topps and that's essentially the design for O-Pee-Chee that year.

Now, that I'm actually seeing a picture of it, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. It looks simple and tasteful with a touch of class. Kind of like Jim Thome himself. Once I get a checklist confirmed for the new releases and some decent scans of the base sets, I'll post a review. I would imagine it would be fairly soon.

Until then, this is a wonderful sign. Jim's smiling face is there to remind me that players start straggling into Arizona and Florida in less than two weeks. The long winter is almost over and baseball will be played. It almost distracts me from the many inches of snow outside.

4 comments:

dayf said...

Man, that's not 1969 Topps, I know 1969 Topps and that's not it. That's fake Upper Deck Vintage kinda sorta looks mostly like Topps but switch it up just a little bit like Queen's baseline went dun-dun-dun-dundunDUN-dah dun-dun-dun-dundunDUN-dah and Vanilla Ice's base line went dun-dun-dun-dundunDUN-dah DUN-dun-dun-dun-dundunDUN-dah bootleg crap. '69 Topps/O-Pee-Chee is easy and they didn't do it. It looks like the name is in foil which is even worse. Man I'm cranky today. I want my Topps! -Sob-

Steve Gierman said...

Actualy, you're right, no matter how cranky you are today.

I'm going from Upper Deck's description and the first picture of this on eBay. The more I look at it, it does look like UD Vintage.

Good eye!

Fleerfan said...

I just took a look at these out on ebay, and I have to tell you they aren't very appealling.

Almost every single card I saw has a grey background. They have to be about the most boring set of pictures I've ever seen. Also - note to UD - the names in grey are difficult to read.

The only thing making this look somewhat like the 1969 Topps/OPC set is the white border around the card, and the circle with the team and position.

If this is a tribute to the 1969 set, it is a pretty poor attempt.

I get changing the team and player name so that the team name is now in the circle and the player name is across the bottom which is the opposite of the 1969 issue, but at least attempt to use the same lettering style and put some color into it so you can read it, and oh, I don't know, maybe take a few pictures OUTSIDE since the 1969 cards have players actually out on a baseball field.

You can even have a few players without hats since the 1969 set has to be the worst set of all time in terms of "Men Without Hats" since the league added 4 teams that year and Topps/OPC tried to use hatless pictures for the players on the expansion teams.

UD - you could have done a much better job with this set. Heck, even when Baseball Card Magazine did their reprint cards that they inserted in their magazines they used the 1969 design one year and it looked a whole lot better than this!

Steve Gierman said...

You should take a look at Topps 2008 Trading Card History insert of Jacoby Ellsbury. The style looks exactly like the 1969 Topps card, but the picture looks like Jacoby is standing in front of a shower door.

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