1971 O-Pee-Chee Bob Veale #368 Pittsburgh Pirates

Description

1971 O-Pee-Chee Bob Veale #368 Pittsburgh Pirates At six feet six inches with a whip of a left arm, Bob Veale was one of the most physically imposing pitchers of the 1960s, and this 1971 O-Pee-Chee Bob Veale #368 captures the big left-hander in the wire-rimmed glasses that made his card one of the most recognizable portraits of the Pittsburgh era. The classic black border frames the gold-capped Pirates home uniform, and the bold yellow banner completes a composition that set builders chase hard in the Canadian printing. O-Pee-Chee produced its 1971 set in far smaller numbers than Topps, so a 1971 O-Pee-Chee Bob Veale #368 with clean eye appeal is a scarce and desirable piece for Pirates team sets and left-handed pitching subsets alike. Veale backed up that imposing silhouette with genuine swing-and-miss stuff, fanning 158 batters in 1967 and twice clearing the 200-strikeout plateau during his Pittsburgh prime, totals that placed him among the National League's most feared power pitchers in the era's great strikeout conversations. A Birmingham Alabama product who signed with the Pirates organization, he battled hitters and the occasional wildness with equal ferocity, and his career later carried him to Boston where he reinvented himself as a valuable reliever. The bilingual reverse preserves his life record in the French-and-English statistical tradition unique to the Canadian issue, a charming reminder that these cards crossed borders just as the game itself was expanding into new markets and new ballparks. the front remains impressively clean with only faint wear at the upper left corner tip, minor chipping confined to the left black border, and centering that is close to even at roughly 50/50 side to side, while the gloss survives with no creases, wrinkles, or surface marks visible in the scan. The reverse carries the Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back rather than a puzzle back, with light toning across the tan field and modest corner handling that is consistent with decades of careful storage. Black borders punish every touch under a grader's loupe, so we keep the estimate conservative, and the strong surface and honest corners support a solid mid-grade assessment for a card that presents far better than its number might suggest. Grade Estimate: EX 5