The last card

Living in Pittsburgh as a youth in the 1970s, the Steelers were beginnign to show  their dominance of the NFL. In 1976, as a kid, I was collecting Topps Football cards the old fashion way - one pack at a time, one card at a time. By the spring of 1977,  I still needed a couple of cards to complete the set.

One day in March or April of 1977, I was at a Kroger's with my mother shopping, when I saw that they were still selling Topps football cards, I threw a couple of packs in the cart. . A great thing about Topps back then is there cards were usually collated in a pack the same way. Thus, Player A would almost always follow player B etc.... Well when I got home I opened the packs. I opened one pack and saw that I got a card that I knew I needed (I needed about 5 cards to complete the set). When I saw that card, I knew that the cards behind it or the cards to follow were going to be new(to me) because of the collation (though I don't think I knew what the word meant, at that age) process.   In that pack, I got the five cards I needed. I can only remember that Andy Russell was one of those players/cards for sure, I think a Buccaneer or Seahawk was another. If I looked over the set again I could probably figured out who they were.