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 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
1952 is often thought of as Topps 1st baseball card set, but it was not.
Topps issued several smaller baseball card sets prior to their huge 1952 set.
Topps buzz word was "BIGGER is BETTER" for their 1952 Topps set which
Topps described as: "GIANT IN BOTH SIZE and NUMBER of CARDS" (407).
Key card in the 1952 Topps set is #311 MICKEY MANTLE.
Often called Mickey Mantle's Rookie card - BUT IT IS NOT. That honor
goes to his 1951 Bowman.
1952 Topps "High Numbers" (#311-#407), are very, very scarce with an
interesting story:
This HUGE set was released in series weeks apart. By the last (6th)
series, baseball season was over and football starting.
Candy shops had plenty of baseball cards from earlier series
so most cancelled their orders for the last series creating the scarcity.
Adding interest is how Topps disposed of the now un-needed cards including
THOUSANDS of 1952 Topps MICKEY MANTLE's. They dumped them into the Atlantic
Ocean like most of New York's trash in those days.
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1954 Bowman Baseball
Cards Checklist & Values
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.
TOP ROOKIES: Don Larsen, Harvey Kuenn, Frank Thomas
TOP STARS: Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra, Duke Snider,
Roy Campanella, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto ...
Ted Williams is not considered part of a complete set.
Click for complete
1954 Bowman Baseball card checklist, values 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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Protecting and Storing your Card Collection
There are many different ways to protect, organize and store your sports cards.
Soft Sleeves
also called "penny sleeves" are the most basic protection for your cards.
Made of thin plastic, they come in packs of 100 and are very inexpensive.
Top Loads
are rigid plastic holders and a step up in protection over "soft sleeves".
Called top-loads because you place the card thru a thin opening at the top.
They come in many sizes for regular cards upto 8-1/2 x 11 for magazines and
even larger.
Screw-Down Acrylic Holders
These are sometimes used for better, more expensive cards. Small screws hold
two pieces of clear acrylic together. In a variety of sizes and thickness
that not only protect the card but can funciton as a paper weight or display
item.
There are also Single-Screw Screw-Downs that use only 1 screw to seal the holder.
They are easier to use and provide the same type of protectionas regular screwdowns
and they are also much less expensive costing as little as .30 in quantity
while 1 inch or 2 inch acrylic screw-downs can cost upto several dollars.
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