My First Completed Set from the 70s

Over the last several years, my collecting goals have been adjusted, readjusted, forgotten about, then readjusted again. A large part of that has been due to my nomad-like 20s. I've moved 7 times since the fall of 2017, and it's hard to have any kind of consistency in collecting or blogging when I'm packing up all of my stuff every 4.5 months (on average). 

For awhile, I was having a soft-restart with each new move. I announced new mini-collections, dropped PCs (bye, Matt Kemp), added new PCs (hello, Walker Buehler), and even moved the blog ot a new domain (then back again) over the last year-and-a-half. Frankly, it's been difficult maintaining these new collections considering I haven't made any time to actually go and add new cards to them. But I'm finally at a point where I feel confident in my ability to devote time to collecting and blogging, and that's a great feeling. 

Despite all of the ups-and-downs over the last few years, I've been steadfast in my chase to complete every Dodgers' team set from Topps Flagship dating back to 1951. Considering there are 2,117 cards to chase as of this post, this has been and will continue to be a long-term (and everlasting) project. But I've made a ton of progress over the last two weeks alone, and I'm happy to begin showing off some of my spoils. 

What better place to begin than with some sweet vintage cardboard. In one quick (and inexpensive) eBay purchase, I managed to complete the colorful 1975 set. I had seven cards from the set heading into the purchase, but happened upon this lot of 26 cards--the exact 26 I needed to complete the 33-card set. After shipping costs and tax were accounted for, these checked in at just 47 cents a pop. Not too bad. 

By my count, there are 7 different color combinations for the 1975 set (please chime in if I'm incorrect), some better than others. I absolutely love the blue/green combo as seen in the Manny Mota card in the scan above, as well as the red/blue combo seen on the Geoff Zahn. I'm a sucker for blue Dodgers' cards, so that's not surprising. The yellow/red and yellow/green combos are also pretty sweet, and that Ron Cey card is a thing of beauty. 

One of the most interesting features of this set--and probably most sets from the 70s--is the sheer amount of sideburns. I counted 17 dudes with sideburns in the Dodgers cards alone, ranging from Rick Auerbachs' modest sidesburns to Jim Wynn's...well, I don't know what to call them. One thing's for sure, someone needs to create a bracket for best sideburns on a baseball card. 

There are a lot of standout cards in the set, but Steve Garvey's takes the cake for me. In fact, when I think of Garvey cards, this is the first one that comes to mind. It's honestly a little surprising considering the popularity/notoriety of his 1973 card--that 1973 being one of my favorite cards in existence. 

The 1975 set marks my first completed set from the 1970s and the earliest set I'm completed to date. Even with this set completed, I still only have 35% of the decade collected, so I'll need to continue filling the gaps. For those interested, here's a snapshot of my progress from 1951-2020. You can view the full spreadsheet which includes year-by-year breakdowns of my needs here.