Bill Freehan the RC Man

I'm sure everyone roughly my age remembers this:

Well here's another famous BILL BILL BILL BILL that arrived in my mailbox this morning:

That's right, guys, it's Bill Freehan's 1963 Topps RC, knocking a huge item off my checklist for that PC.  This copy is in half-decent shape, with an obviously bad upper-right corner, iffy centering, some fading and various other flaws.  Still, for what it cost relative to other copies I've seen on the interwebs, I thought it was a nice deal.  It also feels great to have the most important card knocked off that list, leaving me with just seven to go in that collection.  

The speed at which I'm acquiring these may prompt me to go after his modern cards as well as part of this collection, though that's something I'll decide once I have everything from his actual playing days.  Because this is the only card in today's post, I thought I'd also include the back:

You can see here that Bill had some pretty nice Minor League stats before his first full season in the bigs in 1963.  The following year he made his first of ten consecutive All-Star teams, and eleven overall.  What's interesting to me as I ponder his career is that it makes me wonder if that's the career arc young Tigers catcher Alex Avila is heading towards, which would be outstanding for a Detroit team that hasn't developed an excellent catcher in forever--maybe Matt Nokes, at least for the first couple years of his career?

Stay tuned for a few more piecemeal posts of recent PC eBay pickups that I've purchased in the last week or so, plus another small Sportlots buy, all of which will lead to some exciting (at least for me) additions to my collections and therefore this blog.