Vintage Fridays: Wally Bunker, 1965 Topps #290

Wally Bunker truly earned his ornate 1964 All-Star Rookie trophy, by way of his excellent age-19 season: 19-5 (a league-best .792 winning percentage), a 2.69 ERA, and a 1.04 WHIP. He was the ace on an Orioles staff that made a surprising run at the American League pennant, finishing a couple games short with 97 wins overall.

I'm sure Wally felt a great sense of accomplishment for dominating major league competition as a teenager. Similarly, I'm going to take a victory lap because I just finished a project that took nearly five years. My good card-collecting friend Max (a.k.a. jacobmrley) obtained the final four cards that I needed for my 1965 Topps set, and the package arrived in the mail this afternoon. I'll be posting blog entries for those cards in the next week or two, but if you're curious, the previously-elusive quartet are: Mickey Mantle, the Clay Carroll/Phil Niekro Braves Rookies card, the Athletics Rookies featuring Catfish Hunter, and the Red Sox Rookies featuring Jim Lonborg. I launched The Great 1965 Topps Project in November 2007, taking a shot in the dark at completing a decades-old 598-card set entirely through trades and donations with fellow Internet-dwelling collectors. I was astounded time and again over the past several years by the generosity of the folks I connected with through my blog. Many of you asked for little to no return from the cards you sent, and I feel like I'll never be able to repay your largesse. But I do look forward to trying! For now, I'm just going to savor the completion of a vintage card set that was released 17 years before I was born. Thanks to Max, Ed, Bob, Dave, Don, Jamie, and anyone else I've overlooked - I'll compile a full list of my contributors when I wrap up the set on my other blog. You are all good people.