Monday, December 8, 2008

1978 Zest

Here is a beautiful 5-card set sent to me by JayBee of bdj610's Topps Baseball Card Blog.

JayBee wrote about it originally right here and Greg from Night Owl Cards (also a recipient of a free set from JayBee) wrote more about it here.

Here are the fronts...



and the backs...



The fronts are identical to those from the regular 1978 Topps set, except for the Montanez photo. The backs are similar but include both English and Spanish for everything, do not include the PLAY BALL game, and Montanez's name includes a cedilla over the "n" that is not present on the back of his regular 78 Topps card.

Thanks again to JayBee for sending this great set of cards!

6 comments:

Jeffrey Wolfe said...

I like the font they used for Mota's stats.

Andy said...

I just noticed two things:

1) Mota was a gardner, according to his position in Spanish (bottom right of the back)

2) Figueroa is the only guy to get a comment, and they didn't go into much detail to allow for both the English and Spanish versions. You'll have to wait until card #365 is posted on the blog, but his regular 1978 Topps card has the same first sentence in its comment, and then a second sentence explaining why it was so good.

jacobmrley said...

i recall searching forever for the montanez back in the days before the internet. shows, swap meets, beckett ads...nothing worked. i eventually gave up. and then when some time had passed and quite by accident, while searching for something else, one of my very first ebay purchases, back in 1999, was the zest set with the willie montanez on the mets. it was a minor victory for technology.

Unknown said...

There are also a handful of Burger King team sets out there for '78, I know the Tigers had one since I own it and I think the Yankees had one, and between this Zest set and those Burger King sets, you can almost make a 78 Traded set. I know the Tiger set has Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker as regular cards and they were on those multi-player rookie cards in the regular '78 set.

Andy said...

I have the 1978 Burger King Tigers but haven't been able to find any of the rest yet. I'll be posting whatever I can find when the time comes.

Splint Chesthair said...

I think there was a Phillies Burger King set as well because I seem to remember looking at the Bake McBride card and wondering why one said "Burger King" and the other didn't. Oops, I just checked, that was 1980, not 1978.