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.
1970/1972/1973 Topps Candy Lids Checklist & Values
Topps has tried many crazy products, called "test issues".
Mostly distributed in limited areas, test issues were scarce.
"Candy Lids" were little tubs of candy with player's photos on
bottom of a 1-7/8" lid. 10 cents/tub, 24 tubs/box.
Topps first Candy Lids in 1970 and they are very, very hard to
find. They had small photos of Tom Seaver, Carl Yastrzemski & Frank Howard.
1970 Topps Candy Lids were called "Baseball Stars Bubble Gum",
had 24 players, the 1973 Topps Candy Lids had 55.
Topps planned 1972 Candy Lids but never released it, a few proofs do exist.
Topps 1973 Pinups & Comics share many of the same photos.
Click for complete
1973 Topps Candy Lids Checklist/Prices
Note: You may be on that page now.
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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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Vintage Topps 1956 Baseball Cards Checklist & Prices
1956 Topps were slightly larger (3-3/4" by 2 5/8") horizontal cards
similar to 1955 Topps cards, some even sharing portraits with 1954 and 1955
Topps cards. Team cards & checklists appeared for the first time in 1956.
With Bowman gone, after missing the last 3 years, Mickey Mantle was back !!!
A fun & simple set, 1956 Topps had no high numbers or expensive rookies
but for serious 1956 collectors, there are over 200 variations.
Most variations deal with card stock (gray or white back).
For #101-180 gray appears to outnumber white about 9-to-1.
Many team cards had 2 or 3 variations with team names
Left, Center or Right.
There are 2 great cards: #31 Hank Aaron which actually pictures Willie Mays
sliding home and #135 Mickey Mantle.
Mantle shown leaping high into the stands robbing a home run !
Artist did a great job showing Mantle making the catch !
BUT ... Mantle looked great leaping but the ball flew over his glove.
The 1956 Topps Pins used same portrait photos as the cards.
Click for complete
1956 Topps Pins Checklist and Prices
Click for more info and complete
1956 Topps Baseball card checklist, values and prices.
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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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