Mets Card of the Week: 1971 Nolan Ryan

I have nine cards of 1970 Diego Segui, a journeyman pitcher whose claim to fame is the answer to a trivia question of being the only player to pitch for the Seattle Pilots and the Seattle Mariners. Either that or teaching Danny Frisella the forkball when they were on the same winter ball team. The reason there are nine 1970 cards of Segui in my possession is that he was in the first series that year. If you collected back in the day when Topps released their sets in series, you know that you always had a ton of cards from the first series and not so many for the last couple of ones. Which brings us to Nolan Ryan.

Most of you know the classic 1968 Ryan rookie card, one that also features Jerry Koosman. That was card number 177, a second-series card and relatively common, unlike the 1967 Tom Seaver rookie card, which didn’t show up until the last series. I always had the Ryan rookie in cards inherited from my older brother whereas I had to go out and buy the Seaver one as an adult.

After being card number 581 in the 607-card set in ’67, Topps gave Seaver a first-series card in 1968, where he was card number 45. This was a pretty standard move for Topps back in the day, putting stars who were in later series as a rookie into the first series the next year. Like Seaver, Rod Carew had a last-series card in ’67 and the following year he was card number 80. Even Koosman, on a second-series card in his rookie year, found himself with a first-series card in 1969, with the shot of him in uniform number 47 with the rookie cup proudly displayed, came in at card number 90.

But Ryan didn’t get that treatment from Topps. Of course, he didn’t win Rookie of the Year, like Seaver did. Nor did he notch 19 wins, like Koosman did in his rookie campaign in ’68. Instead, Ryan essentially was just a guy. And Topps treated him accordingly. Here are the card numbers for Ryan in the remaining years he was on the Mets:

1969 – 533
1970 – 712
1971 – 513

Being in the later series those years drives up the prices of those Ryan cards now. A second-year Seaver card, when he was in the first series, is roughly a $100 card today. A second-year Ryan card, which was in the sixth series, goes for roughly 3X the amount of the Seaver. Ryan is more of a hobby “darling” than Seaver. But not 3X as much of one.

And Topps continued the higher-series Ryan cards with the Angels, too. In 1972, he was card number 595, which allowed him to be featured on the Angels. And in 1973, the last year they released cards in series, Ryan still didn’t make it to the first series, checking in with card number 220.

While Topps may have done Ryan – and collectors – no favors with his high-number cards, they at least did better with the poses featured on his cards. His three solo cards on the Mets all avoided the drab head shots that Seaver got early in his career. The 1971 Ryan is a favorite of mine, showing a live-action shot from Shea Stadium, with the Royal Crown billboard in the background.

It’s like Topps knew. They never gave him the Wally Bunker or Jim Shellenback treatment in those early days. If only the Mets had listened…