1966 OPC on the left, 1969 OPC on the right.

I’ve been looking for a good 1969 OPC Rose for ages.  To get the ’66 at the same time was a real bonus. 1960s OPC baseball is good in the sense that the sets are nice and small and there really aren’t high numbers to deal with (other than 1965, where the third series is a little tough).  At the same time, 1966 and 1967 barely seem to have been printed at all and even at Canadian shows, old OPC ball can be a tough find.

At the start of 2013, my plan for the year was not to focus on one or two sets the way I normally did, but rather to hit a little bit of everything.  I wanted five of each post-war hockey set that I didn’t have finished, plus ten of each baseball set.  It didn’t quite work out that way (Pete was the only ’66 I got all year), but it was close enough and fun enough that I’ll take this approach again.  It keeps me from getting bored with doing the same thing over and over.

I always get a kick out of card backs, more even than many card fronts.  I like to read what they said about players while they were actually playing.  It’s cool that even by 1966, “hustle” was part of the Pete Rose lexicon.  It’s also pretty amazing to realize that he hit .335 in the year of the pitcher, though without the production of a Yaz.

I do have one hockey set that’s so close to being done that I basically have to finish it. Beyond that, though, I’m looking forward to the smorgasbord approach.  It holds more surprises.

Both of these predate the arrival of the bilingual backs. The telltale sign of OPC is that the colours are off and there is the little PTD in Canada on the bottom/side.