1956 Topps # 62 Hal Smith [GB] (Orioles)

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1959 Topps displays vintage 1959 Topps Baseball sports cards.
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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.

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.

Protecting and Storing your Card Collection

There are many different ways to protect, organize and store your sports cards.

Soft Sleeves also called "penny sleeves" are the most basic protection for your cards. Made of thin plastic, they come in packs of 100 and are very inexpensive.

Top Loads are rigid plastic holders and a step up in protection over "soft sleeves". Called top-loads because you place the card thru a thin opening at the top. They come in many sizes for regular cards upto 8-1/2 x 11 for magazines and even larger.

Screw-Down Acrylic Holders
These are sometimes used for better, more expensive cards. Small screws hold two pieces of clear acrylic together. In a variety of sizes and thickness that not only protect the card but can funciton as a paper weight or display item.

There are also Single-Screw Screw-Downs that use only 1 screw to seal the holder. They are easier to use and provide the same type of protectionas regular screwdowns and they are also much less expensive costing as little as .30 in quantity while 1 inch or 2 inch acrylic screw-downs can cost upto several dollars.

1956 Topps # 62 Hal Smith [GB] (Orioles)

Hartland Baseball Statues & Figurines

Team Autographed / Signed Baseballs