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.
1961 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
The 1961 Topps baseball card set had 587 cards (#1-#598 with some missing numbers).
In addition to the missing cards, 2 cards were accidently numbered #463
(the Braves Team card was supposed to be card #426).
1961 Topps set was packed with special "subsets":
League Leaders (10 cards), World Series cards (10),
Highlights (11 cards), MVP's (16 cards), Checklists (7 cards plus several variations),
Team cards, Special Multi-Player cards, Managers,
Topps Rookie All-Star Trophies, & Sporting News All-Stars
Of note - 1961 Topps were the first cards bearing the very popular Topps Rookie All-Star Award Trophies.
"High Number" cards (#523-#589) are very scarce.
The least attractive aspect of the 1961 Topps baseball card set
were the capless players !!!
Baseball expansion led to the problem when
Los Angeles Angels were added,
the Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins
and the Washington Senators got a new franchise.
Because of these changes, tons of players were capless
and looked awful. picture you 50 year old grand-dad.
Life was obviously tougher back then.
More 1961 Topps card info:
Card #1 was All-American basketball player Dick Groat
Card #2 was Roger Maris, right before his record breaking 61 Home Run season
Mickey Mantle was on (6) 1961 Topps cards adding to the sets cost.
Topps released 3 other sets in 1961: Topps Dice Game, Topps Magic Rub-Offs & Topps Stamps.
Click for complete
1961 Topps baseball cards Checklist and Prices
Note: You may be on that page right now.
Click for complete
1961 Topps Autographed baseball cards Checklist and Prices
|
1960 Nu-Card Baseball Hi-Lites
Checklist & Prices
This 72-card set of large (3-1/4" x 5-3/8") cards called 'Hi-Lites'
featured baseball highlights. Printed in red and black, card
fronts resembled a newspaper front page.
Backs featured trivia question (with answer) sending you to a card
with more info.
Rare cards #1-18 can be found blank-backed with just black printing.
In 2 months on eBay, NONE of nearly (200) 1960 Nu-Cards listings were
black only ! Other than #1 Ruth, black only cards are nearly identical
differing only in print color and copyright.
Note: You may be on that page now.
Click for complete
1961 Nu-Card Baseball Scoops checklist & prices
|
|
1977 Topps Cloth Stickers
Checklist & Values
As 1977 baseball season was winding down, Topps wanted to sell more cards
and released the "1977 Topps Cloth Stickers" test issue.
The 1977 Topps Cloth Stickers set came in at (73) total cards: (55)
cloth stickers and (18) checklist/puzzle cards that
formed large photos of the 1976 AL & NL All-Star teams.
2 Stickers and 1 checklist/puzzle card were in each .15 cent pack
with 36/packs in a box.
Nearly all fronts are same as the regular issue
- with a few different like Nolan Ryan.
LEFT: Regular issue;
CENTER: Cloth Sticker;
RIGHT: O-Pee-Chee (from Canada).
The 2-1/2" x 3" stickers had highlights & instructions on back.
The backing was easily removed and kids could stick them everywhere !
TEACHERS LOVED THEM !!!
Packed with Hall-of-Famers (19 of 55) plus Pete Rose and Mark Fidrych.
In addition, stickers & puzzle pieces came with one '*' or two '**'
asterisks on back.
|
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.
© 1995-2019 "InterNet's Baseball Card Store" / Joseph Juhasz ... All Rights Reserved
|
![1969 O-Pee-Chee/OPC # 35 Joe Morgan [#] (Astros) Baseball cards value](/jpgs/6/1969o-035s.jpg)