1960 Nu-Card Hi-Lites #16 BABE RUTH - 'Calls His Shot' (Yankees)

Gateway Stamp Company has provided collectors well over 1 MILLION authenticated certified autographs over the last 30 years.
Silk Cachets from Gateway Stamp Company
Even though a "stamp company", Gateway rarely dealt in stamps, going down a new and creative road becoming one of the world's most unique secrets in autograph collecting combining the best in art, color photographs, history and autographs with their full-color silk cachet envelopes. Gateway's first client was Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock with hundreds to follow.

WHAT ARE FULL-COLOR SILK CACHETS?
A "cachet" is a message or design on an envelope marking a postal event. "Full-color silk" refers to the delicate material into which the original art and photography are printed. After which each silk is applied to the envelope, signed by the player and then officially post-marked by the U.S. Post Office IN THE CITY OF THE EVENT !!!

WHY POSTMARKS?
The key to EVERY Gateway cachet is the postmark.The best way to mark a date in history is with a postmark. The rules governing the granting of postmarks GUARANTEE that NO Gateway issue can EVER be re-issued protecting the value of the autographed, postmarked cachets !!!

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.

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.