Royale LeGrand Orange

I do not always buy cards off of COMC, but rarely a week goes by where I do not visit the site and add a couple of items to my cart.  I use it as more of a place holder than an actual shopping cart.  

There are all sorts of great cards to explore, but I like to dig pretty deep on some of the items.  I have really been trying to find some unique cards for some of the players and teams I collect.  In the end, I will buy a large percentage of the cards in my cart, but usually not all at once.  Slowly over time.  

One of my most recent groupings of cards that I have explored has been the 1970 La Pizza Royale set.  They are Expos cards.  No, the Bulls were never an Expos affiliate, just a fluke that a group of their former players ended up in Montreal.  

So, a few of these cards have sat in my cart the past few weeks while I have tried to figure out more about them.  I still do not know much, but they look pretty neat.  

The cards come in different colors, but they all seem to be roughly around $5.  I was mainly interested in finding copies of the Gene Mauch and Rusty Staub cards.  Both played for the Bulls back in the day, both were important Major Leaguers for different reasons.  Since Ebay bucks rolled in the other day, and the COMC cards are double listed as Buy It Nows on the Bay, I rolled the dice on a copy of one of the Rusty Staub cards.  

Le Grand Orange in Montreal.  

I ended up with a copy of the green card.  The picture is the same no matter the color.  The position at the bottom is always written in French.   It's a really nice card too.  These La Pizza Royale cards are larger than normal cards, and they are on fairly thick card stock.  For cards that were likely a restaurant giveaway, they are as good as it gets.  

A quick comparison to a standard baseball card.  

There is a slight ding in the bottom left-hand corner of the Staub card, which probably helped keep the price more in line with the commons, but Staub is the best card in the in the La Pizza Royale set.  Overall, this is a great addition to my Durham Bulls collection, and likely the first of several La Pizza cards that I am hoping to find.