1968 Topps - REDS Near Complete TEAM SET/Lot (24/30)

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.

Over 5,000 vintage sports and non-sports items in each weekly auction

Hartland Baseball Statues & Figurines

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.

Hartland Baseball Statues & Figurines checklist and prices

Team Autographed / Signed Baseballs

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.

Autographed/Signed Team Baseball inventory