Ranking 20 Cards from the 1970s that All Collections Need- Prices, Values, and Pop Reports Included 

I love the 1972 Clemente card. A legend tossing the ball to himself framed by the psychedelic circus graphic package… It’s iconically whimsical and one of my favorite cards of the decade.

Great vid! Love the detailed analysis. Right in my heyday of collecting - 73 - 78 with a few 70 - 72 scattered in. Surprised about Schmidt being #1, because after the Red Sox, the A's were my team in those days and Reggie was The Man! Guess I will have to upgrade my 73 Schmidt,. Haven't graded it because of off centering and a slight chipping. I was surprised 1970 Clemente didn't come up. One of my favorite cards! Proud to have a 73 Clemente (last card) in PSA 8 pulled out of a pack as a kid! Keep the great content coming!

This list is tough because I never collect floating head cards. However, I love the Ryan, Brett, Smith, and Murray cards! Great vid, keep them comin 👍

Love the video! These are some great cards. I would add the 72’ Clemente. That one is a classic. Also love that you did this list in collectors grade. Showing me a list of 5 and 6 figure PSA 10s with a pop count of 50 is almost meaningless. Only channel I can think of which does this.

I saw you Video yesterday morning before I was going to a card show in West Sacrament. I laughed when you said the Ryan in a PSA 5 was a card you like. I am building for over 30 years a PSA 8 71 a little over half way there but unlikely never will get there. I took that PSA 5 with me and left kids free from Willows to enjoy the card show. As I was there I was looking at a value box and starting talking to a gentleman and it was a great 30 minute conversative as we were looking thought the box. Near the end of the conservation he mentioned he had a son that has a RU-vid channel. I am a loyal watcher of your channel and new right away it was your dad. You talk often about your dad and the time you have spent with him over the year in the hobby. That really resonates with me. I just lost my father a few months ago and it was his love of collecting that has make me a life long collector. He collected mostly stamps but the last 20 plus years he worked with me on my collection. It was wonderful talking to your dad yesterday and it made me fell the present of my father. From one teacher to another thank you for your channel and sharing your dad with me for a short time.

Cards from the 70’s are very undervalued, your video proves that. I have every 70’s set but only a few are really worth grading. Unless they grade 8 or more. Grades 6 and 7 are great buys

Awesome video as always! Love the 71 and 75 sets, so many good rookies!

Love the '71 Munson and '70 Bench . Two classics! Also the '75 Hank is a cool card. Overall I loved all your pics! Great video.

You hit a homerun with this video! I've always been amazed at these 70's prices because they are just sooooooo low. Great investments I think for sure. Keep up the kick butt videos.

Very Cool Video. I Love the Decade of Topps Cards in the 1970's. Well Actually that is a Awesome Decade to Collect anything Baseball**** Thanks and Take Care.

Yeah man. Big time agree here for some affordable opportunities for some great cards. Nice video.

Phenomenal video!! These are the cards right in my wheelhouse . . . . completely agree on the 1971 Topps Baylor/Baker card!! Well done

Great video and content! Thank you

Cool video...those are some sweet cards....I have the Garvey rookie from 71 set...I've had it for decades, and haven't looked at it in some time... might have to do that this weekend.🙂 👍⚾

This was a good video. Enjoyed hearing your thoughts. Hope you'll do one for other sports. Or even some non-sports, too.

Great job on the list. I have picked up mid grade yount, molitor, mays, and Brett. I agree the 70’s are vastly underrated.

Thanks for the work putting this together, great video@@

Good list....Schmidt is on my list

Great video bro!

Great video Graig! I agree, there are a lot of great cards from the 70's that are reasonably valued (compared to other eras). Love the 71 set (especially the Ryan, Blyleven, and Garvey). Seems like the 70's have a fairly wide range of prices (9's and 10's are very expensive), but 5/6/7 are all reasonable. Thanks for putting out another deeply researched video. You can tell that you spend a lot of time researching!

Vintage is looking pretty good!!👍😎

You make a great point about the $20-25 grading fees built in. Tons of Superstars of the 1970's can be bought for $10-20. Definitely NOT junk wax!!

I also love your pick of the 71 Ryan. It’s the first action image for a Ryan card, his last card as a Met, and the framing of his head in between the words “royal” and “crown” on the Shea billboard are so appropriate. The photog couldn’t have had ANY idea at the time that this man would become the all time strikeout king - but the royal crown certainly fits now!

What amazing production quality of your video?

Nice vid...

The one card from the 70s every collector needs is the 1975 Herb Washington #407 Pinch Runner card.

The 79 Ozzie is my all time favorite card. I picked up a PSA 8 back in April of 2020 for $120.

Excellent video! Thanks for the consistently thought out content! Gene Richards, who shares Dawson's RC, was the rookie stolen base record holder before Raines and Coleman.

72 Carew, 72 Clemente, and 71 Garvey are my favs from the 70s. You should do a show on what happens when you have every card you ever wanted.

Great idea for a fantastic list. I also believe most of the 1970's cards are undervalued. I especially think the 1977 set is under rated as well.

And don’t forget, Cooper brings some value to that Fisk rookie

Graig, I absolutely love the 1975 OPC set, me living here in Canada. OPC was easier to come by. Peter

Great video! I love your list as I have 16 of the 20 cards in PSA 8 (except for the 71’s) If I was to chose 4 that I have that aren’t on your list, I would go with: 71 Topps Thurman Munson 73 Topps Roberto Clemente (final card and stats) 75 Topps Keith Hernandez RC 76 Topps Hank Aaron (Final Card)

Gil Hodges 1972 OPC

The 1970s cards have some great value especially the first 4-5 years. Don’t know that you missed any on your list. There are a couple of cards I like. Clemente’s 71 and 72 are classics, Ryan’s 70 card. The 74 set also has the Parker RC and some really great action cards, my favorites are Reggie Jackson, Nolan Ryan and Pete Rose.

I think it's time to revisit this topic. Dig a little deeper into the controversy over multi-rookie cards and show us all the coolest 70's baseball card nostalgia...!

I need 5 on your list. Of course 3 are in the top 4 lol

Great list. I'm not sure which set is more brutal to get a really good card in, the 1971 or the 1975.

Personally for me the 1971 Thurman Munson over his rookie card and being a Dodgers fan my whole life, my favorite player growing up, the 1971 Steve Garvey's rookie.

I think most of collectors from this era already have our 70’s cards.

Another great video Graig. I have all these cards in sets. In some instances, I would be better off to buy a graded card rather than grade my own. Some of these are selling at or around graded fees.

I think 1970’s cards will always be affordable in most grades (with the exception of PSA 9 and 10). The 70’s was the first decade that kids kept their collections so they don’t have the scarcity of previous decades. My older cousins/uncles who grew up in the 50’s/60’s either gave away their cards or threw away their cards so those decades will always be low pop. Everyone in my neighborhood who collected in the 70’s and into the 80’s kept the cards or passed them down to their kids. My nephew is currently going through my brother’s collection from the 70’s he found in the attic. The other thing that about 70’s cards is a lot of them out there in someone’s attic are not graded. That would inflate the pop report even more. My co-worker just brought in her brother’s cards from the 70’s for me to look at. He had a ‘75 Brett in great condition. Well Centered, no corner damage, probably a PSA 8. How many of those 70’s collections are sitting in some GenX parents house ungraded?

The 1974 Hank Aaron #1 in the O-Pee-Chee version is virtually impossible to find in high grade and centered.

A few thoughts... 1. Ryan is so tough to choose. I love the '71 but his '74 is an awesome card as well that's relatively affordable. 2. The 1974 Tom Seaver card is really cool and easily his best photo at least to that time. 3. I truly believe time is on the 1970's cards side. I think values are rising and will continue to do so. As we pass the 50 year mark, these cards become more rare, especially in higher grade. You're already seeing the early 70's cards carry pretty good value in PSA 7s and 8's and later 70's in 9s and 10's. I think you'll see the late 70's values for PSA 7's and 8's rise at a steady pace, again as Father Time helps. I truly think the 70's stars provide some of the best value right now. They just aren't going to explode in a year or two, but they'll continue to grow. 4. The #s on the 1979 Ozzie RC looked off because you had the PSA values off by one #. You had 7 & 8 listed, while those are the values for 8 & 9. 5. I think I may be the only one that thinks this way, but I see 1980 Topps as a 70's set and undervalued. It's the final year Topps had the basic monopoly before Fleer and Donruss came in to water down the market. So to me, 1980 is much closer to the sets of the 70's than the following years in the 80's which spurred the junk wax era a few years later. 6. In putting my money where my "mouth" is, I have just recently purchased a PSA 7 1973 Seaver, PSA 8 1974's Schmidt and Seaver, a PSA 7 1976 Bench, a PSA 9 1978 and 1978 Seaver, a few early 80's Seaver and Jim Palmer PSA 10s, a 1978 PSA 9 Schmidt, a 1977 PSA 8 Winfield, raw 1972 Reggie, 1973 Gibson, Aaron, 1977 Nolan Ryan as well as my endless pursuit of raw and graded 1975s. 7. In general, very good subject. Personally, I'd rather see a # based on average sales rather than just one recent sale. But I get the generalization you were going for. You hit on the point of the topic. Enjoyed it, thanks!

1971 Ted Simmons 😊

The Baker Baylor card is a high number hence the high price. Plus many set collectors have started to build these 1971 sets. The Schmidt is also a high number series. Enjoyed the video. The only other cards that come to mind is the 1973 Goose Gossage and 1971 Steve Garvey.

Blyleven's curveball, and I think Barry Zito's are the best I've seen.

Try getting them all in 8s, not so cheap.

What I've never understood is why the 1975 Topps Mini Cards are much less valuable then the 1975 "Regular" size versions. PSA 9 Mini's of the Yount and Brett Rookie Cards go for like 1/3 of the value of the "regular" sized ones but were only distributed in Michigan and California so the manufacturing print run on the "Mini" Cards was FAR SMALLER! That makes no sense to me? Back in 1976 the following year I sent away( I live in New England) to a Michigan Card Retailer for a full set of the 1975 Mini's and have been sending some off to be graded at PSA! Waiting for the PSA return now but did not send in the Brett,Yount or Gary Carter Rookie Cards as I'm still holding onto them! Does it make sense to you that the version with the smaller print run of basically the same card are worth much less?

I'm mostly a pre 1965 card guy, but I've grown to have a love hate type of thing with the 1972 Topps. I used to think they were ugly, but its unique mod design has grown on me a bit. Some superstar players heading towards the end of their careers include Aaron, Mays, Yastrzemski etc. Most can be found at bargain prices.

I believe the fact that Topps in 1974 started releasing the entire set at once when they were previously in series (usually 6 or 7 of them) could be a reason for lower prices since most of the cards you mentioned are from 1974 on. You're right that 71 cards are very tough to find in near mint condition because of the black bordersalong with the 79 cards having centering issues. Even the cards you mentioned 1973 and before like the Fisk rookie were mostly low numbered cards except for the 71 Ryan and 71 Baker/Baylor rookie cards. I can think of a few early 70s Topps that were pricey like the 70 Bench(#660), 71 Mays(#600), and 71 Clemente (#630) because of the high numbers. Experience is telling me this after completing all of the 70s Topps set the past several years.

I have a Fisk and Winfield rookie card. They are ungraded, I'm not sure what to do with them. For highest resale value, I assume getting them graded, with PSA would be the direction to go, but when it comes to grading, you never really know what will happen...I, also have the Munson RC and 1971 ungraded Munson too. Based on this list, the Eddie Murray, Gary Carter and Dennis Eckersley seem to have best value, it does get really expensive though, once you get to that 8-10 bracket though...

You left off the can of Red Bull on this list!

Is the trammel/molitor card the “greatest” rookie card of all time if you go by games played? All 4 had extensive major league careers…I wonder if it could be beat. Mickey klutts hung around forever and Washington was a starting shortstop for almost 10 years. That’s a lot of mlb talent

Dwight Evans rookie card

PSA 3 Yount cheapest on EBAY now is $43 with ship. 2 other people want $70 for a 3 grade.

Murphy hit 399 not over 400

I have all of them except Dawson, Schmidt, Munson, I would go by psa prices if I have to choose between e bay and psa guide. because e bay is a auction, and not a indication of what the card is worth but a indication of who was the highest bidder at that time. There might have been someone that would have bid higher, but maybe he spent his money on another card. A lot of people will pay a lot just for the grade regardless of the player. I have seen a sixty four Gordy Colman at a ten go for over a thousand dollars on e bay out side of a relative I can't see anybody spending that on a Gordy Coleman card. My price guide is a common ground price for what they are selling for at a card show.

No ‘74 Dave Parker? That’s it, I’m unsubbed😆I don’t have the Blyleven or Schmidt rookies, but I’m good on everything else. Really wish the ‘74 Schmidt was a gold cup like the ‘71 Munson (another great card), ‘76 Carter and ‘78 Dawson though. Also weird Murphy had a ‘78 rookie catchers card as well along with the ‘77

Impact from 15+ years of no competition for Topps reducing innovation/design alongside with waning interest in Baseball beginning in 1970s and cost-conscious decision making reducing quality and increasing supply during the stagflationary 1970s are all factors that make these cards less desirable

So I disagree on your even debating rice and sale Murphy in HOF. There is no debate if you watched them play. They played clean and deserve more honors than the cheaters ahead of them.

Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice, Andre Dawson are not true Hall of Famers in my opinion. There ought to be a second hall for the non legends of the game.