WIREPHOTO: Dan Marino - [08/20/91] 'Back With The Fish' (Dolphins)

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WIREPHOTO: Dan Marino - [08/20/91] 'Back With The Fish' (Dolphins) Football cards value
Baseball
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.

1952 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values


1952 is often thought of as Topps 1st baseball card set, but it was not.
Topps issued several smaller baseball card sets prior to their huge 1952 set.
Topps buzz word was "BIGGER is BETTER" for their 1952 Topps set which Topps described as: "GIANT IN BOTH SIZE and NUMBER of CARDS" (407).

Key card in the 1952 Topps set is #311 MICKEY MANTLE. Often called Mickey Mantle's Rookie card - BUT IT IS NOT. That honor goes to his 1951 Bowman.
1952 Topps "High Numbers" (#311-#407), are very, very scarce with an interesting story:
This HUGE set was released in series weeks apart. By the last (6th) series, baseball season was over and football starting. Candy shops had plenty of baseball cards from earlier series so most cancelled their orders for the last series creating the scarcity.

Adding interest is how Topps disposed of the now un-needed cards including THOUSANDS of 1952 Topps MICKEY MANTLE's. They dumped them into the Atlantic Ocean like most of New York's trash in those days.

Click for complete 1952 Topps Baseball card checklist, values and prices.
Baseball

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.

Click for our current Autographed/Signed Team Baseball inventory
Note: You may be on that page now.
Baseball

1993 Topps Finest Refractors
Checklist & Values


Topps went all in in 1993 with their most premium baseball card set to date, the famous 1993 Topps Finest set with RARE parallel issue REFRACTORS. With only 199 cards, 7 per team, the 'Finest' set only had room for the 'Finest' players !

Rare REFRACTORS were randomly placed in some packs. REFRACTORS looked exactly like regular cards unless you knew where AND how to look. Tilting a REFRACTOR in sunshine released a rainbow of colors, "refracting light" Topps scientists liked to say.

Current info is only 241 REFRACTORS were issued of each card making this parallel issue one of the scarcest. Collecting a complete set is made even more difficult by the hoarding of certain cards by collectors AND even major league baseball players !

Click for complete 1993 Topps Finest Refractors checklist, values & prices.
Note: You may be on that page right now.

Baseball
How long have sports cards been around ? (part 2)

The first important and mainstream basketball set was issued by Bowman in 1948. Other than a Topps set in 1957-58 and a 1961-62 Fleer set, there were no mainstream basketball sets issued until Topps started producing yearly sets beginning with their 1969-70 set featuring the rookie card of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who then went under the name of Lew Alcindor.

In hockey, there were a few sets issued in the 1910's and while O-Pee-Chee issued some sets in the 1930's, the real modern sets began in 1951 with the itroduction of Parkhurst's first set.

In racing, while cards go back as far as the early Indy car days of 1911, modern racing sets began in 1988 with the issues released by MAXX.

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