General Forum

One of my favorite aspects of card collecting in my youth was seeing the entire career statistics of players on the backs of their cards.  One of my favorite cards of all time is the 1974-75 Topps Wilt Chamberlain in part because it shows him with the San Diego Conquistadors, a historical factoid I find fascinating, and also because of the glorious career immortalized on the back of the card.  

Why don't the card companies do this anymore? I have tried, in vain, to find 2016 sets that show the whole career stats for NFL and NBA players.  It makes me sad because I like to get cards from the ends of the careers of notable player simply for the stats on the back, and this makes that much less appealing.

I guess that part of the reason might be that stats are so easy to find nowadays that card companies have decided to include "color" instead of stats to make the cards a little more interesting.  That's a reasonable decision, I guess, but I pine for the olden days.

BTW, am I missing anything, or is it really the case that full career stat on back cards are no longer being produced by any major card company?

I agree, lots of hockey cards now a days just have another photo on the back with a small blurb and sometimes a few years of stats. Mind you there are still a few that try to do it as much as possible, OPC would be one. But then there are the players like Jagr and Howe .... you would need a booklet card!! LOL

You aren't missing anything. The last NBA set to include full career stats was 2014-15 Hoops. As someone who is OCD about stats it annoys me as well. While I do spend a great deal of time on the computer, when I am looking through my cards I don't usually sit at my computer and I don't want to be forced to be tied to my computer all the time either. But most of the card companies don't care about true collectors, just flippers.

Ranford -- I don't collect very many hockey cards, but it doesn't surprise me that they've gone this route as well. It is funny. I know that Topps went to two cards for George Blanda in 1975 because his stats took up so much space. Nolan Ryan's last card also requires a magnifying glass!

Billy -- I think you've hit the nail on the head with your reference to OCD! That describes perfectly my feelings of annoyance at modern cards!  One set that I've discovered recently that I love is the Conlon sets of baseball cards. It's really nice to get a card with a picture of an old time HoFer with his complete stats on the back! Just makes me happy...

Conlon set for sale. ~BOB~

Topps still includes complete statistics on the back of their cards as they almost always have.  Great topic. 

That's why I consider Topps to be the gold standard of cards.  I am so very disappointed that they got out of non-baseball sports cards. I love the mid 70s basketball and football sets.

Alas, I think I started this topic a few months too late.  I've already collected all of the Conlon HoFers, as well as a bunch of other from the sets. I do like them a lot -- great pictures and the stats on the backs are a real plus.