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.
1954 Bowman Baseball
Cards Checklist & Values
Competition was raging between Topps and Bowman in 1953 and 1954 leading to
problems with both companies sets. Bowman caused Topps to missing 6 cards
in 1953 with Topps getting revenge by signing Ted Williams to an exclusive
contract in 1954. Bowman then had to pull Ted Williams card #66 from their
set shortly after they started printing, replacing it with Jimmy Piersall,
who also was on card #210 making the 1954 Bowman Ted Williams #6
one of 50's scarcest cards.
Perhaps distracted by it's competition with Topps, the 1954 Bowman set was
filled with errors and variations. Nearly 20% (40/224 cards) had some sort
of variation, with some having more than 2.
The St. Louis Browns recent move to Baltimore also made things interesting.
Bowman's artists had no idea what an Orioles jersey would look like -
so they just madeone up.
TOP ROOKIES: Don Larsen, Harvey Kuenn, Frank Thomas
TOP STARS: Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra, Duke Snider,
Roy Campanella, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto ...
Ted Williams is not considered part of a complete set.
Click for complete
1954 Bowman Baseball card checklist, values and prices.
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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Auction's most costly vintage baseball cards
The history of vintage baseball card auctions is long and colorful.
T-206 Honus Wagner tobacco cards have sold for upto $2.8 million in
auction. The "Holy Grail of Sports Cards", it's extreme-high auction
value can mostly be attributed to great PR and "auction fever".
It's not close to being the rarest baseball card and Honus Wagner is not
Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle. Yes, the T-206 set is beautiful & special but
because of the # of cards and scarcities, few collector's try to complete,
which should keep auction competition down compared to say 1933 Goudey
or 1952 Topps baseball card issues.
BUT IT DOES NOT...
There's a story Wagner banned his card because he was anti-tobacco
but there are other stories about financial considerations.
You surely have heard of PSA and may even know that this card was the
FIRST they ever graded. But did you know that dealer (B.l. .ast.o name
encoded) admitted tampering with the card, perhaps having it trimmed
down to size, before PSA graded it so highly for the auction.
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1964 Topps Stand-Ups
Checklist & Values
One of Topps most popular 1960's test issues !!!
Blank-backed, unnumbered & standard size - cards were called
"Stand-Ups". "Stand-Ups" refers to a type of card that was die cut around
the player's picture. The background could be folded so the player's picture
could "stand up" alone.
1934-36 Batter Up and the 1951 Topps All-Star sets are 2 other popular
stand-up issues.
22 of the 77 cards are single prints making them twice as scarce and much
higher in demand.
Thanks to the green and yellow borders and that most cards have been folded,
1964 Stand-Ups extremely difficult to obtain in high grade.
On the left and right are images of a pack and box.
Set packed with 19 Hall-of-Famers including the Top-5: Mickey Mantle,
Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron & Sandy Koufax.
Click for complete
1964 Topps Stand-Ups checklist and prices
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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1
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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