1970 Topps Basketball 1st Series Vending Box (500) (Fritsch/BBCE)

Bidding

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/24/2024

This is an extraordinary opportunity to pick up a pristine unopened vending box of one of the great oversized Topps basketball issues of the vintage era, the quirky and colorful 1970 issue, with the 2 ½-by-4 11/16-inch cards sporting blazing, vivid background colors and a lineup of Hall of Famers to die for. The box, revealing some light wear, boasts an inventory of 500 cards from Series One (cards 1-110), all neatly encased in the famed BBCE sealed wrap that carries the imprimatur of Steve Hart’s venerable service, who noted it was from the Larry Fritsch Cards Vault. The winning bidder of this incredible entry is going to ponder the possibilities of a ridiculous number of Hall of Famers (19), several key RCs, Short-prints galore, five All-Stars and both Checklists. Imagine the prospect of finding Lew Alcindor, Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, John Havlicek (SP), Elgin Baylor and Elvin Hayes at the head of a class that also includes the likes of Earl Monroe, Bill Bradley, Wes Unseld, Walt Bellamy, Jerry Lucas, Lenny Wilkens (Short-print), Don Nelson (Short-print), Nate Thurmond, Gus Johnson, Lou Hudson and Gail Goodrich. Toss in Rookie cards of Pat Riley, Bob Dandridge and Norm Van Lier (Short-print) and then you round it out with those two tricky Checklists and five All-Star cards of the like of Jerry West, Connie Hawkins, Willis Reed, Billy Cunningham and Walt Frazier and you can see once again why the curious Topps tradition of top-loading talent into Series One every year was a winning concept. This is a box of unopened material as legendary as the Hall of Fame group nestled inside, and there's a chance to be the only collector on the planet who could pair the Series 1 and Series 2 vending boxes together.