Another Raleigh-Durham Post

I am not going to rehash the whole story in this post, but in the late 1960s the Durham Bulls bought and merged with the Carolina League franchise that played in Raleigh.  Long story short, we ended up with a few years of Raleigh-Durham teams rather than the Durham Bulls.  There was the Raleigh-Durham Mets, Raleigh-Durham Phillies, and the Raleigh-Durham Triangles.

Raleigh and Durham are two different cities.  They are roughly half an hour away from each other depending on traffic and which roads you take.  While the Bulls were playing as a "Raleigh-Durham" franchise, they were really playing in both cities, splitting their home game in between the Durham Athletic Park and Deveraux Meadows.

Not ideal, but the teams were actually pretty good during this time.

The Raleigh-Durham Mets finished first in the Carolina League in 1968, the Phillies came in second in 1969, and the Triangles also came in second in 1970.

There were some good players on these teams too.  I have posted a few on here over the past few years.  Last week I was fortunate enough to pick up three new cards of  two different players from the 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies.

Two pretty impactful players to say the least considering both were on the 1980 Phillies teams that brought the franchise their first ever World Series title.

So, I will go first with the catcher from the last out in the video.  

Bob Boone was a long time catcher for the Phillies, as well as several other teams during a long Major League career.  He is also the father of Bret and Aaron Boone.  I like the design and appearance of this card, but Topps really mangled this from the original.

If you are not familiar with the 2001 Topps Archives set, the players were featured in the set on a minimum of two cards.  Their first card in the set was their rookie, with the second card being their last appearance on a Topps card.  They took some liberties with the rookie cards that originally had multiple players on the front.

The original Bob Boone rookie featured......

Skip Jutze and Mike Ivie.  A Mike Ivie autograph would be alright.  Skip Jutze?  Sure.  

This Luzinski autographed card comes from the same set.  I had another Luzinski autograph prior to owning this card.  The black border looks nice on the base card from the Archives set, but I don't like it when they are given to players to sign.  Luzinski has a nice autograph and it is a bit of shame that the signature dips into the black border area.

Still an excellent card that is a welcome addition to the collection.

Similar to the Boone card above, this card was modified from it's original two player format to feature just Luzinski.

Last card.  My favorite of the three new cards in this post.  

Luzinski has been in several Topps products as a signer over the past number of years, but this Archives autograph out of the Fan Favorites products has to be one of his toughest signatures to track down.  I have seen several over the years, but price has been somewhat of a factor in the past.  Not sure if this card was officially ever declared a short print, not shown that way on most of the checklist sites, but they are usually listed that way on Ebay and COMC.

Pretty sure that the last Luzinski autograph is going to close me out on the whole Raleigh-Durham card scene for awhile unless someone actually makes cards with the Raleigh-Durham Mets, Phillies, or Triangles in their uniforms.