1963 Topps Baseball Project - It really ties the room together.

So earlier this month I announced that one of my collecting goals was to start a vintage set and that vintage set was 1963 Topps Baseball.  Well so far I've acquired 31 cards.  Just over 5% of the set.  I set up some rules for myself, created a separate page for progress, and even decided to try and track total expenditures.  I decided against setting up a whole separate blog for the set like some of the other very well done set blogs since I seem to have a hard time posting regularly on my other blogs anyways.  So I'll just be making regular 1963 Topps Project posts here.  So lets start off with 3 more great cards added to the set recently.

First we have card #82 of Ed "Rock" Rakow.

Ed only played 7 years in the Majors, coming up through the Dodgers farm system, moving to Kansas City and ended his career in 1967 with the Atlanta Braves.

In 1989, Ed was the Manager of the West Palm Beach Tropics Senior League,  where one of my all time favorites Rollie Fingers played.  Ed past away on Aug 26th, 2000 at the age of 65.  From the back of the card we also learn that Ed was a switch-hitter and originally an outfielder.

Next up we have card #73 Bobby Bragan manager for the Milwaukee Braves.

The back of this card holds all the information I would probably write up at least up to 1963.  This was Bobby's first year as manager of the Braves and followed the team to Atlanta and coached till 1966.  He passed away in Jan of 2010 at the age of 92.

Finally for this post we have card #111 "little" Al Jackson.

Look at that All-Star Rookie Trophy.

Al started with Pittsburgh, getting called up a couple of times before moving to the Mets were he played the rest of the 60's except for two years, 1966 and 67, when he was trade to the Cardinals.  Al finished his career with the Reds in 1969.

And out of the three featured, Al is the only extant one of the bunch.  From what I could find still living in the Waco, Texas area at the age of 76.