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.
Topps Vault & Proofs
Auctioneer Guernsey's went thru Topps offices gathering over 3,000
items for the auction. Topps spokesman reported auction sales of
OVER $1.5 million !!! Additional sales were made from a mail-only
auction. Collector Keith Olbermann, at the auction, described it
as an archaeological dig.
Topps archive material continued to accumulate after the auction
ending up with another treasure of over 250,000 transparencies,
uncut sheets, color separations, art, photos, slides, proof sheets
& wrappers, canceled checks, contracts and one-of-a-kind
items to sell.
Click for complete
Topps Vault, Proofs & Blank-Backs
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1968 Topps Action All-Star Stickers Checklist & Values
1968 was an awesome year for Topps test & oddball issues with
Game cards, Player Posters, 3-D cards, Plaks, Discs, Punchouts
and these "Baseball Action Stickers" also called "Action All-Stars
Stickers".
"Baseball Action Stickers" were STAR-PACKED 3-panel sticker strips,
some with facsimile autographs. There were (16) different strips in the
set but only 12 are totally different. #13 thru #16 re-used panels from
#1 thru #12.
Strips were perforated, folded at joints and put in packs.
Boxes had 12 packs (10 cents each) with 1 sticker per pack. Sets could be
made back then for $1.60. Today, the Mantle panel goes for around $2,000.
Collectors often collect just individual panels as complete strips are
so scarce, fragile & EXPENSIVE.
Single panels themselves are quite scarce - in 20+ years PSA has graded
just over 200 TOTAL compared to over 1,000 1952 Mantles !!!
PROOF sheet below is missing the facsimile autographs.
Click for complete
1968 Topps Action All-Star Stickers Info, Checklist & Prices
Another interesting issue:
1960 Pirates Tag-Ons Baseball Stickers
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Autographed Gateway Cachets
Gateway Stamp Company has provided collectors over 1 MILLION
authenticated certified autographs over the last 30+ years.
Though a "stamp company", Gateway went down a new creative road
combining art, color photographs, historical events & autographs
with their full-color silk cachet envelopes.
WHAT IS A SILK CACHET ?
A "cachet" is a design on an envelope marking an event.
"Silk" refers to the delicate material the art and photography are
printed on after which it's signed by the player and then post-marked by
the Post Office IN THE EVENT'S CITY !!!
WHY POSTMARKS?
A postmark is a great way to mark historical events and the rules
governing postmarks GUARANTEES that NO Gateway issue can EVER be
re-issued protecting their value !!!
Click for complete
Autographed Gateway Cachets info, values & 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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