With a design as simple and as gray as the concrete pillars that supported the new-fangled stadiums, 1970 Topps had the misfortune of having been released in-between the elegant white-bordered 1969 set and the black-bordered 1971 Topps, with the lack of a strong rookie class.
Never the less it represented a new era for Topps and a decade of different designs and production changes.
The highest priced PSA 10 condition card from the 1970 Topps baseball set is currently the Thurman Munson. The rookie card last sold for over $33.2 thousand and remains the highest valued and most sought after card from the set to date. Despite a POP report of over 4 thousand total graded, only 4 PSA 10 cards have ever been graded by PSA.
The famous player whose card was not included in the 1970 Topps baseball set was Mickey Mantle. For the first time since the company started printing cards, a Mickey Mantle was not put into a Topps regular issue, which considering his retirement was expected but still a new sensation for long time collectors..
Topps released 3 different types of wax pack display boxes for their 1970 baseball set. Each of them contained a unique series and each had a different sales incentive for kids to encourage them to buy the new packs.
There were 3 inserts included in all the 1970 Topps Baseball Wax packs. These included the All Star Poster, Scratch-off Insert or a Baseball Booklet and were released into different series (i.e. series 1, series 3, etc.).
1970 Topps cello boxes included 24 packs of 33 cards each. Prior to 1970, Topps had issued cello packs in clear cellophane wrappers without any pricing. Interestingly, they also occasionally used a specially printed cellophane wrapper before 1970 too. In 1970 (as well as in 1971 and 1972) Topps produced a cellophane pack of cards that was wrapped both in clear cellophane and again in a nicely designed little box.
A 1970 Topps rack pack cost 39 cents. The irony of this however was that Topps was in essence giving its consumers a 28% discount when purchasing a rack pack. Let’s do some math:
A complete set of 1970 Topps baseball consisted of 720 cards making it the largest set ever to be produced by Topps at the time. As was custom, the set was released in seven series with Series Six (cards #547-633) and Seven (#634-720) the scarcest. Cards of Pete Rose, Willie Mays and Ernie Banks can be found in Series Six, while Nolan Ryan and a third-year Johnny Bench were in Series Seven.
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