Time to Look at the 1974 Kellogg's Baseball Cards

I look forward to checking out the backs of the 1974 Kellogg's baseball cards.  This was the first set that I completed by eating cereal and trading them with friends.  I remember completing the set before the 1975s came out.  I have no memory of trading or which cards I got last, but I did have about five friends who traded with me regularly.

I do know that I didn't get a factory set.  I couldn't even get the 25 cents from my parents to mail in for the popular Snake and Mongoose Hot Wheels cars that were offered around that time.  Once I started my paper route I had a bit of money around.

Here are some PSA stats for the 1974 cards.

9,919 cards have been graded.  That's an average of over 183 copies of each card.

3,378 - 10s.  (34.0%)

4,941 - 9s.  (49.8%)

1,174 - 8s.  (11.8%)

That's over 95.6% of the cards submitted.  The 1974s tend not to curl as much as other years.  Like most years, the 1974s have sturdy corners too.   At some other point I will compare these to other years.

What about the individual cards?

The Wilbur Wood and Ron Santo variations are not surprisingly the lowest graded cards.

I've had a problem with cards 1 - 9.  Cracks, cracks, cracks.  How do the PSA numbers look for these cards?   Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson have more graded cards than Nolan Ryan.  Tom Seaver's numbers also almost equal those of Ryan.

Rick Monday (#02) and Joe Coleman (#03) are the least graded cards.  Greg Luzinski (#09) is in the lowest six graded cards as well.

Bob Gibson's card (#01) has only had 144 graded.  That is less than all Hall of Famers except Ron Santo (#07).  Gibson's card is such a condition problem that it has been graded less than cards of Manny Sanguillen, Bobby Murcer,  John Mayberry, Kenny Holtzman, Bobby Bonds, Chris Speier, Sparky Lyle, Cookie Rojas, Tommy Davis, Willie Davis and Manny Mota.  He's exactly equal to Willie Hortan and one ahead of Sal Bando.

Overall cards 1 - 9 are being graded less, but are they receiving similar grades?

1,541 cards have been graded.  That's an average of over 171 copies of each card.  That doesn't seem to be a big difference from the overall set average of 183, but consider that Nolan Ryan (#08 with 421 graded samples) skews these numbers.

219 - 10s.  (14.2%) -- not many 10s here

878 - 9s.  (57.0%)  -- lots more 9s here since there are less 10s

325 - 8s.  (21.1%)

That's over 92.3% of the cards submitted.   A lot less 10s than the total listed for the entire set.

When excluding cards 1 - 9, the remainder of the set (10 - 54) has the following grading percentages -

10s - 37.7%

9s - 48.9%

8s - 10.1%