1974 Topps Stamps

I don't know where my fascination with stamps and stickers comes from. Perhaps I was denied such pleasures as a child, or maybe I was punished for peeling them and sticking them to walls of the house, who knows. Nonetheless, stamps (that is, baseball players done on stamps) have the same draw on me today as they did when I was a kid.

Gamble is ALL 70's - from the afro sticking out from every possible direction from under his hat, to his 'stache. Hendrick, on the other hand, takes the super-groomed, clean cut approach. Gaylord Perry has that, "Where is your mother?" look on his face. As long as I can remember, Perry always looked older than he was - maybe thew wisdom beyond his years....


Charlie Spikes fits somewhere between Gamble and Hendrick on the grooming scale - clean cut with the Elvis sideburns. Tidrow basically sports the same look a lot of players give when posing for their pictures. Bell seems a little confused, yet somehow confident. I was a huge Bell fan as a kid.


Chambliss looks like he is ready to take someone down, while Duffy has the classic Duffy look... I'm not sure what's going on with Duncan, though really, he is showing the classic "bigger white guy" look of the 70's...


Ellis is trying to look tough, but I don't think he quite pulls it off here.

I realize it sounds as if I am bad-mouthing my beloved team's players. I am trying to evaluate their pictures in relation to the era in which they were taken. Some players, like Gamble, Duffy, and Bell, maintained basically the same look for their entire career. Even before this picture was posted, had I said "Oscar Gamble," you would have most likely thought of the guy with the 'fro. Duffy? The guy in the glasses... and Bell is the toe-headed wonder of the Tribe.

I was about 5 or 6 when these stamps were issued, and so far as my memory serves, I never bought them or even saw them in the card store. These were added to my collection this past summer, during my quest to get my collection entered into a database. The program I use is "Card Collector 7," which comes pre-loaded with a ton of sets. As I entered my cards, I would browse the other editions of cards during that time or by that manufacturer and discover worlds of cards I had not seen before. That, of course led me to buying the ones I "needed" to fill my collection... It is a bittersweet addiction, this baseball card thing.... :-)