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.
Autographed Gateway Cachets
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 !!!
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Vintage Boxing cards
Checklist & Values
Like baseball cards, boxing cards have been produced in this country
since the 1880's. First in tobacco products, later in gum and candy.
Unlike baseball cards, boxing cards have been produced in many countries
around the world.
In 1910 Mecca and Hassan tobacco companies put out colorful boxing sets
with names like: Jack Johnson, Jim Jeffries, John L. Sullivan & Jim Corbett.
In 1951 Topps joined in with a fairly large card set they called "Ringside".
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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.
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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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