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.
1953 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
The 1953 Topps set is a collection of gorgeous portraits drawn by the
leading sports artists of the day. Key cards in the 1953 Topps set
include: Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays & Satchel Paige.
Satchel Paige had his name spelled incorrectly (2 'L') on the card front.
As with all Topps sets from the 1950's & 1960's, 1953 Topps was issued in
series, (#1-85, #86-165, #166-220 & #221-280) with the final series
"High Numbers" the least produced, least available and thus the most costly.
Topps and Bowman still at war likely accounts for the 6 missing #'s
from the High Number series.
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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1938 Horrors of War - Gum Inc.
One of the most famous card sets of all time,
it began as a 240-card set featuring the Chinese-Japanese War,
the Spanish Civil War and the Ethiopian War. 48 cards were later
added on Germany and the buildup to World War II.
Cards #25-192 appear to be slightly more common than the others
cards in the series. Cards 241-288 are similar to more recent
high numbers in that each pack held one card from the high series
and one card from the low series.
The set is extremely popular and card "values" have increased
ten-fold since the early 1990s. Cards #1, #240, #277, #283, #286 & #288 are particularly valuable,
especially in prime condition.
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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.
Another interesting issue:
1960 Pirates Tag-Ons Baseball Stickers
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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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