1951 Bowman #165 Ted Williams [#PSA] (Red Sox)

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.

1954 Bowman Wax Box 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.

1954 Bowman Baseball card checklist, values and prices.

1964 Topps Stand-Ups
Checklist & Values

One of Topps most popular 1960's test issues !!!
Blank-backed, unnumbered & standard size - cards were called "Stand-Ups". "Stand-Ups" refers to a type of card that was die cut around the player's picture. The background could be folded so the player's picture could "stand up" alone. 1934-36 Batter Up and the 1951 Topps All-Star sets are 2 other popular stand-up issues.
22 of the 77 cards are single prints making them twice as scarce and much higher in demand. Thanks to the green and yellow borders and that most cards have been folded, 1964 Stand-Ups extremely difficult to obtain in high grade.
On the left and right are images of a pack and box. Set packed with 19 Hall-of-Famers including the Top-5: Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron & Sandy Koufax.

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.

1951 Bowman #165 Ted Williams [#PSA] (Red Sox)

1954 Bowman Baseball Cards Checklist & Values

1964 Topps Stand-Ups Checklist & Values

1932,1933,1936 Chicago Cubs Picture Pack Team Issue

1954 Bowman Baseball
Cards Checklist & Values

1964 Topps Stand-Ups
Checklist & Values

1932,1933,1936 Chicago Cubs
Picture Pack Team Issue