1960 Cardboard reflections from Cardboard Collections

Colbey Hopper over at Cardboard Collections put up a nice 4th of July trade bait post. He was offering up a nice selection of vintage. Since I was free that afternoon, I was checking over the blogs and jumped at the chance to grab some vintage.


The 1960 set is one of my favorites. 1965, 1959, 1972 and 1960 are all sets I'd like to complete one of these days. If I see these cards at a card store or a flea market I'll try to grab a couple here and there to collect before actually concentrating on amassing as many as I can.

I wasn't drawn to these because of the players. I haven't heard of any of these dudes, I just wanted some 1960 vintage.

Having a Kansas City A's card is kind of cool though.


1960 would be the 5th season for the Kansas City Athletics. They previously resided in Philadelphia. At the end of the 1960 season they would have a 313-456 record with no winning seasons.

They decided to trade away most of their players. Many of those players would play for the Yankees, and would give the A's the nickname of being the Yankees farm team. Roger Maris was one of these trades.

The owners wanted to rid the team of the Philadelphia players so that the team would have a new identity. Technically they were right as they adopted a new identity of cellar dwellers.

According to sportsencyclopedia 1960 is the year that one of the owners Charlie Finley resorted to many different tricks to try and drum up some interest in the team. He constructed a zoo in the outfield, a robotic rabbit to bring out balls to the umpire and also he would dress up the grounds crew in space suits. Nothing worked much for the 1960 team as they went 58-96.


When I first looked at the card I immediately recognized the green and gold on the card design. I assumed it was a color scheme based on the team colors. Upon closer inspection I noticed that the hat was in blue and red. Apparently they changed colors in 1963 with an eye to TV. Finley thought that TV viewers deserved to see more than the traditional red, blue and black.

With all that inspection, I never got to the odd name that drew me to looking at the card in the first place. Oh well, maybe that will be for another post one day.


Speaking of names, let's look at Don Cardwell.

Nice name for a card blog post. He would own the distinction of being the first player to throw a no-hitter in his first game after being traded. That would be around the time this card was pulled from a pack. The only problem is that he had been traded to the Cubs by that point after spending 4 seasons with the Phillies.

He was also a part of the 1969 Mets World Series team.


Hal Brown's best season statically was in 1960. He owned a 12-5 record with an ERA of 3.06.

He looks a little bothered by being photographed for this particular card. From what I can tell online he looks to still be alive and kicking. Good for him. Actually all of the players featured on this post except for Don Cardwell are still alive.

George Altman was the first major player to hit two home runs in the same game off of Sandy Koufax. August 4th, 1961. That would also be the date of our current president's birthday unless you believe in all of the conspiracy theories.

He kept Don Cardwell's no-hitter alive against the St. Louis Cardinals on May 15th, 1960 with a ninth inning catch. How's that for a conspiracy? Somehow it all ties together. The losing pitcher in that game was Hollis, Oklahoma's own Lindy McDaniel. Three seasons later he would be pitching for the Cubs. I would do more on his tenure with the Cubs, but I'm going to wait until I get one of his Cubs cards of my own.

That's all I've got in the tank for these four cards.



Oh wait, one more thing; something I noticed about the cards themselves is that the higher number cards have darker backs than the lower numbered cards. I only have a couple of more of these 1960 cards and they seem to follow the same theme. I don't know the checklist for the different series for these cards, but I'm guessing that's what's going on here.

I noticed another thing while looking at the backs; these are all guys from North Carolina. Interesting, as Colby is from N.C. Hmm, I'm glad he gave up these guys as I'm really happy to get them for my collection.

Thanks for the cards and thanks for reading.