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 Wheaties Champions
In 1952 Wheaties issued this set of cards on the back of their boxes.
The 2" x 2-3/4" cards needed to be hand cut from the back of the boxes
making high quality samples almost impossible to find. The set featured
30 different champions from a variety of sports in both "Portrait" and "In-Action"
poses for a total of 60 different cards. 10 of the 30 athletes are baseball players
with football, basketball, golf, bowling, diving and other sports also
included.
Top players in the set are Ted Williams, Stan Musial, George Mikan,
Ben Hogan and Otto Graham.
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1974 Topps DECKLE EDGE Checklist & Values
This scarce 72-card test issue set was released with very limited
East Coast distribution making them quite scarce.
Officially simply called "Topps Baseball Photos", their serrated or "DECKLED"
edge gave them the name they go by today.
The 2 7/8" x 5" inch cards were sold in 2 card packs with gum or 3 card
packs without for 5 cents.
Click to enlarge Complete Proof Sheet on left
Fronts are similar to b&w Exhibit Postcards from the 50's
with photos and facsimile autographs.
The backs make this very scarce test issue more interesting !
They feature handwritten script of player's name, team, position & date
and location of the photograph as well as a mock newspaper article.
This was Topps 2nd "Deckle Edge" issue, their first being the smaller
and more common 1969 Topps Deckle Edge inserts in 1969 Topps packs.
Variations of 1974 Topps Deckle Edge exist,
making this issue more fun and challenging to collect.
Backs can be found in gray or a much scarcer white.
Also, more limited proof versions with non-scalloped edges exist and
can be found with and without card numbers.
Click for complete
1969 Topps Deckle Edge checklist and prices
Click for complete
1974 Topps Deckle Edge checklist and prices
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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1952,1953,1954,1955 Red Man TOBACCO Checklist & Values
Tobacco cards were instrumental in the start of the baseball card industry
but were pretty much unheard of since 1920. That is until RED MAN TOBACCO
got in the game issuing baseball cards in 1952, 1953, 1954 & 1955.
For just 20 cents you got a pouch of Red Man tobacco and one awesome
3-1/2 x 4 inch baseball card with it's tab (3-1/2 x 3-5/8 without).
Exchange FIFTY tabs and you got one free big league style felt
baseball cap of your favorite team. This made cards with tabs much,
much harder to find and values 2 to 10 times higher.
25 players from each league were selected by "Sporting News" editor
J.G. Taylor Spink. A Player's artwork with different backgrounds
was used year after year. If a player changed teams, new team name
& logo were painted over the old one. To determine the year, just
subtract 1 from the expiration date on back of the card.
The 1954 set had four variations.
Click for complete
1952,1953,1954,1955 Red Man Tobacco cards checklist & prices
Note: You may be on that page.
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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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