Below are short bits & pieces on sportscard & baseball trading card collecting.
Please wander around the website for more info, prices, values & images
on vintage baseball, football, basketball, hockey, sport and non-sports cards.
1934,1935,1936 Diamond Matchbooks
During much of the Great Depression, matchbook collecting swept the country !
Sports matchbooks started appearing in the 1930s, most issued by Diamond Match Company
of New York. Over the next few years, several series were issued with
similar designs; b/w photo of the player on front with short write-up
and stats on back. The player's name and team was also printed on the 'saddle'.
Please consider the following info as approximate.
1934's first baseball release featured 200 players, in 4 different background
colors (red,blue,green and orange) for a total of 800 different covers.
The set features plenty of Hall-of-Fame greats like Dizzy Dean and Mel Ott.
1935's issue was tiny with only 24 total covers (8 red,8 blue,8 green).
A third series was later released with 200 or more different covers (players/colors).
1930's matchbook covers appear to be huge bargains for collectors as their current values
are fractions of the value of Goudey and other baseball cards from the same era.
Click for complete
1935-1936 Diamond Matchbook Checklist and Prices
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1991 Topps Desert Shield cards
Checklist & Values
The 792 card 1991 Topps Desert Shield Baseball card set was issued by
Topps for the soldiers serving in the Gulf War. The Desert Shield set is
a variation of Topps regular 1991 baseball card with each card having a
special gold-foiled 'Desert Shield' stamp added to the front.
Many of the cards, scooped up by military personnel stateside, never made
it overseas. The equivalent of approx 6,500 sets of cards were made.
Cards are still sought after and fairly scarce with complete sets
nearly impossible to find. Be aware of counterfeits. Fakes can easily be
determined by comparing the gold foil logo with a real Desert Shield card.
The Chipper Jones rookie is the key card in the set along with the usual
super stars like Nolan Ryan, Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken ...
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Hartland Baseball Statues & Figurines
Hartland produced it's first baseball statue back in the early 60's.
SCD calls the 1960's Mickey Mantle Hartland Statue the single most
popular plastic sports statue ever produced !
In 1988 Hartland released 25th Anniversary Editions, nearly
identical to the original.
Hartland later joined with Krause Publications, to create the SCD Authentic
series - the original 18 in different poses.
Hartland Figurines are amazingly beautiful and exquisitely detailed
with painted pinstripes and wood grained bats.
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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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.
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![Frank Thomas - 1991 Star Company SILVER Complete Set (White Sox) [#/2000] Baseball cards value](/jpgs/s/star-1991ft.jpg)