do you know what this is?

i'm late to the party, as usual, but this is one of the worst conditioned cards in my collection.  it's a 1971 topps reggie jackson card.

sure, my 1956 topps jackie robinson card is trimmed, and my 1963 topps ken mcmullen rookie (with some guy named pete rose on it) is scuffed (can't believe i haven't shown that card yet), and i carried a 1974 topps steve garvey card in my wallet for a while so you know it's got some damage, plus somewhere i have a really thrashed 1977 topps bill travers card that was in the very first pack of cards i ever opened, and i had a really badly scuffed 1971 topps george shellenback card that was one of the very first 1971 cards i owned.  i sent it to night owl a couple of years ago and i kinda wish i hadn't - i didn't expect to miss it at all. anyway, all that it true, but when i saw all of the bad conditioned cards popping up in people's posts, the first one i thought of in my collection was this black bordered reggie.

i can tell you exactly when i bought it - at the very first card convention i ever went to.  it was 1979 and my dad took me to los angeles after seeing an ad for a card show in the la times.  once we got to the show, we looked around, and i spotted a vintage bargain bin (without really knowing what it was).  it looked like a barrel with a bunch of older cards tossed in it - like kindling for a hobo's fire.  i picked a couple of cards off the top and couldn't believe that i could own either of the two cards i was holding.  one of the cards was the reggie up top.

i want to say the price was $5. i'm pretty sure that's what it was, but i can't be sure now.   i know it seems odd that a kid whose dodgers had just been beaten two years in a row by reggie and his yankees would fixate on this card, but he was an athletic and he looked so young and it was from 1971 and, well, i decided to buy it.  a year later, i was buying a bunch of a's cards as i had 'billy ball' fever.

these days, i could probably get a better conditioned version of the card for about what i paid in 1979.  or less, even. but i don't want to.  this card is now part of my 1971 topps set-in-progress.

and what was the other card that i put back in the bin when i chose reggie? it was a 1966 topps willie mays card.  i just couldn't buy a giant.