Popular 1969 Milton Bradley Baseball board game gives vintage card collectors neat options, fond memories

If you painted the 1969 Major League Baseball season with a one-word brush it would be: “color.”

Examples include: MLB expanding by four teams; the first season with four divisions, two each in the American and National Leagues; the lowering of the height of the pitcher’s mound to promote more offense; and the usually lowly New York Mets shocking the baseball world by winning the World Series.

Topps, following this tinted theme, produced their largest baseball set to date (664 cards) and had color on the card backs that often mimicked the hot-pink shade of bubble gum that came in their wax packs. Plus, the card maker rolled out a couple of baseball “test” sets that still spark green envy from collectors that hope to one day find and afford a few high-grade samples of these oddball issues, such as the 1969 high-gloss Supers or the 4-on-1 Mini stickers.

The Transogram toy and game company, the maker of such popular games as Tiddledywinks and Green Ghost, meanwhile, had individual color player photos/cards, with team logos on the hats, on the boxes (60 different) that accented the small plastic baseball player figures inside.

The only other nationally distributed U.S. baseball card offering, of sorts, of any size that year occupied a different lane on this “Highway of Hue” as the “Official Baseball Game” made by Milton Bradley, the company of board game fame.

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Likely looking to capitalize on the growing popularity of Strat-O-Matic board games, which launched in the early ’60s, Milton Bradley’s product contained card backs with Strat-O-Matic-esque information and card fronts with black-and-white close-up player photos with team logos airbrushed on their hats.

At 296 player cards and 24 team header cards, with several up-and-coming established stars of the time, the issue has a mixed bag of factors to consider for today’s collector.

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Sports card enthusiast Walt Bettinger dove right into this set like Pete Rose used to dive headfirst into second base, with supreme gusto. He now owns the top-ranked version of this 1969 offering on the PSA Set Registry.

“I first started seriously collecting the set a little over a decade ago, I started adding cards to the Set Registry about five years ago,” Bettinger wrote via email.

But his thread to this set winds back several decades.

“For me, all collecting is about rekindling memories of my youth. I played the Milton Bradley game as a young boy who loved playing baseball and building the set brought back those memories with each new card,” he said.

When Bettinger received the game as a gift his excitement level was “palpable!” But there was a slight downside for him with respect to the game.

“Separating the cards from their original sheets was a bit painstaking, as was a little disappointment when I realized the color card photos on the front of the box didn’t match the cards inside,” Bettinger said. “But once I got past that, it was one of my favorite games as a boy.”

Another strong element of interest for Bettinger focuses on the images in another way.

“As a boy, the photos were a lifeline to what my favorite players actually looked like,” he said. “Today, I appreciate the uniqueness of the photos that I do not believe were used on any other baseball cards.”

In large part, what the player photos lacked in luster they somewhat made up for with the difference in size and a set that included several Hall of Famers and all-time greats. The roster features: Hank Aaron (the set starter, since the cards are unnumbered and normally listed alphabetically), Ernie Banks, Johnny Bench, Roberto Clemente, Harmon Killebrew, Willie Mays, Brooks and Frank Robinson, Pete Rose, Tom Seaver, and a rookie card of slugger Reggie Jackson, who happens to be one of Bettinger’s personal favorites from the issue (he has a PSA 9, Pop 1).

“As a long-time Baltimore Orioles fan, my favorite card is Boog Powell. His infectious smile is evident on the card,” said Bettinger, who owns the only PSA 10 version of the card. A second Oriole also makes Bettinger’s top list: “Dave Johnson, PSA 8, Pop 1, none higher.”

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While the majority of the collector’s ’69 Milton Bradley cards are in Mint condition or better, there are a couple of outliers he looks to reel in.

“Because the cards came in sheets, there are centering and printing challenges, particularly those on the end or corner of sheets,” he said. “For example, I have two PSA 5 cards that are Pop 1, none higher.”

The culprits? Rich Reese (Twins) and Roy White (Yankees).

“Trying to upgrade those cards has been a labor of love,” he said.

RESULTS MAY VARY

Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox, a teammate on Roy White’s Yankees, saw decent MLB action in 1968 and 1969, but only had one Topps card (1969) as a player. It is a bit surprising to see Cox in the ’69 Milton Bradley issue—and listed as Bob.

Most of the 24 teams in this set have at least 11 cards. The Chicago Cubs have the most representatives (17), while the 1968 World Champion Detroit Tigers are a close second (16). The Kansas City Royals and Montreal Expos, two of the 1969 expansion teams, have the fewest on their rosters at five cards apiece.

Prices for the ’69 Milton Bradley pasteboards often fall in the $1-$3 range for commons ; stars, especially graded examples, can sell for solid money. This vintage issue seems ideal for type, player or team collectors.

“I’ve sold complete games, but individual cards are a tough sell, with Reggie [Jackson], Mays, Clemente and the other big stars the exceptions,” Art Smith of SportsCards Plus said at the October Chantilly, Va. show. Smith noted demand for these cards remains low because “they are not mainstream and they are terrible looking.”

“It took me two years to sell the last complete [1969] game and six to nine months on the one before that,” he said.

For complete games, Smith emphasized that the game’s quality is key.

“If it’s in nice condition it will sell, but the box has to be nice and not many of the boxes survived in nice condition,” Smith said.

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Bettinger knows the appeal and demand for the Milton Bradley cards is low for most hobbyists, mostly due to the “black-and-white cards with less than crystal clear photos,” but he is totally comfortable with that reality.

“It isn’t an overly popular set among collectors, which made it a wonderful challenge for me to assemble,” he said. “My graded set is 100% complete. My efforts to build the set are an example of being a collector, not an investor. My guess is that the value of the set is quite modest, but that wasn’t the point in building it.”

One can’t spell “collector” without c-o-l-o-r.

BOLD YET SUBTLE

Milton Bradley produced two other baseball game sets in this era—in 1970 (28 player cards) and 1972 (378 cards), all unnumbered and undated.

The 1970 set stands out because it is slightly bigger than the other two issues (2 3/8-by-3½ inches vs. 2-by-3) and comes with rounded corners. The 1972 offering, however, at first glance appears identical to the 1969 set (same size, square corners and, where applicable, same photos).

The nuanced difference between the 1969 and 1972 collections? On the 1969 card backs, any number “1” in bold red does not have a “base,” meaning it is missing a line at the bottom. The ’72 backs, meanwhile, feature a slight “base” on any “1” in bold red.

Although each of this trio of Milton Bradley sets delivers a strong mix of stars, two Hall of Famers from that period are excluded from any of these board game issues: pitcher Bob Gibson and slugger Carl Yastrzemski. Interestingly, both Gibson and Yaz do show up in the 1969 and 1970 Transogram sets.