AUTOGRAPHED: 1972 Topps #417 Tom Hall w/PSA/DNA Auction LOA (Reds)

Team Autographed / Signed Baseballs

Team signed baseballs were the thing well before single-signed balls exploded on the market.
What is a "Team Signed Baseball" ???
Simple answer: A ball with XXX signatures of a certain team for a certain year. What is difficult is the XXX. Baseball tons of roster moves make it nearly impossible to "Get Them All".

Generally, team signed baseballs from early 1900's had 10 to 15 signatures, the 1940's that jumped to 18 to 25. Joyce Sports Research Collection (Notre Dame) says "signatures must include only members of a specific team from a specific year, and there must be some approximation of completeness."

Not concrete but to me a "team ball" MUST have ALL the team's STARS (unless a rookie or in season trade) and in today's market at least 20, preferably more, and the manager.

Determining Age of Team Signed Balls
"Official" league balls have stamped signatures of current league presidents on the "sweet spot". Starting 1934/1935 balls were produced by Spalding (NL) and Reach (AL). Rawlings took over in 1977/78. Have a possible team roster at hand, ESPN & baseball-reference.com have great sites), decipher a few signatures then solve the puzzle.

Autographed/Signed Team Baseball inventory

Ways to sell your baseball cards

2 reasons auctions are popular way to sell vintage sports cards.
#1 Desirable items tend to get top dollar (or better !)
#2 Everything goes
... This can be good - Everything gone, happy with final total
... or can be very bad - Everything gone, but at super low prices

OTHER WAYS TO SELL YOUR CARDS
•eBay Buy-it-Now •card store •swap meet •Craigslist •garage/yard sale
or •DONATE to a charity for tax write-off
Not selling but perhaps easiest with possible $$$ return.
ASSUMPTIONS:
#1) You are one of the RARE tax payers left in America
#2) You have mostly late 80's & 90's "junk"
Consider donating the "junk" and keep better stuff to sell later. Tax deduction was based on LESSER of "what-it-cost" & "What-it's-Worth". For "What-it's-Worth", I use Beckett which can be higher than what you paid. Check with your tax guy.

Cut/Paste TurboTax discussion link below:
https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/3372284-are-trading-card-donations-deductible-if-so-how-much Possible Charities for Donations
•Goodwill •Salvation Army •Cerebal Palsy •Children's Hospitals •Cubs scout troops
...or an online charity
•Cards 2 Kids •Commons4Kids.org •CollectiblesWithCauses.org
Verify all "charities " before donating.

Vintage Sportscard Auction

1972 Manama
Official Postage Stamps

These beautiful official government issued postage stamps from Manama were made of a plastic like material and used a an advanced printing technique to show multiple images as the card was moved. This technique was later used on a baseball card issue called "Sportflics".

Each of these postage stamps pictured 2 different players as the stamp was titled. There were 8 different stamps issued, 4 with American player-combos and 4 with Japanese player-combos.

A special stamp picturing BABE RUTH alongside the famous Yankees "MURDERS ROW" was also issued and appears to be significantly scarcer than the others.

History Of O-Pee-Chee

O-Pee-Chee (OPC) based in Ontario Canada, is mostly thought of as the Canadian version of Topps but it actually pre-dates Topps by many years.

In 1933, OPC issued their first sports card set, the V304 Hockey cards and is currently in the tens of thousands. Their first baseball set was issued in 1937. It was similar to the 1934 Goudeys and Batter-Ups and the top player was Joe Dimaggio.

O-Pee-Chee created baseball card sets similar to TOpps from 1965 into the 1990's. At first OPC sets were much smaller than Topps and included just the first few series. Fronts & backs were nearly identical but with a small "Printed in Canada" on the back and the card stock was slightly different.

Baseball being much less popular in Canada, OPC print runs of their early years were between 1% and 10% of Topps making them exceedingly scarce !!!

Starting in 1970, Canadian legislation demanded all items produced in Canada carry both French & English so OPC baseball cards became bilingual with both languages included.
Other OPC differences include:
1971, OPC even changed the back design to a much more interesting back and also offered 14 different card photos not in the Topps set.
1972 OPC included a card of Gil Hodges mentioning his death that was not a part of the Topps set.
1974 OPC did not include any "Washington Nationals" variations.
1977 the card format remained like Topps but almost 1/3 of the OPC set had different poses/images than Topps.
In late 1970's, OPC card fronts appeared similar to Topps but sometimes included traded information saying "Now with XXXX". They were able to do this as the OPC cards were printed much later into the season.

AUTOGRAPHED: 1972 Topps #417 Tom Hall w/PSA/DNA Auction LOA (Reds)

Team Autographed / Signed Baseballs

Ways to sell your baseball cards

1972 Manama Official Postage Stamps

1972 Manama
Official Postage Stamps