1970 Topps #675 Jose Cardenal SCARCE HIGH # (Cardinals)
| Grade | NEAR MINT |
|---|---|
| Book Value | $ 15 |
| Our Price |
$ 14.95
Add to cart
|
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Team Autographed / Signed Baseballs
Team signed baseballs were the thing well before single-signed
balls exploded on the market.
Click for our current
Autographed/Signed Team Baseball inventory
What is a "Team Signed Baseball" ??? Simple answer: A ball with XXX signatures of a certain team for a certain year. What is difficult is the XXX. Baseball tons of roster moves make it nearly impossible to "Get Them All". Generally, team signed baseballs from early 1900's had 10 to 15 signatures, the 1940's that jumped to 18 to 25. Joyce Sports Research Collection (Notre Dame) says "signatures must include only members of a specific team from a specific year, and there must be some approximation of completeness." Not concrete but to me a "team ball" MUST have ALL the team's STARS (unless a rookie or in season trade) and in today's market at least 20, preferably more, and the manager.
Determining Age of Team Signed Balls
Team Signed Baseballs Values Team autographed baseballs on official league balls get higher values. They are "official", made better, preserve better and even help in dating especially with balls signed at "Reunion" baseball card shows which brought together great teams of the past.
Facsimile Autographed Balls Note: You may be on that page now. |
1955 Topps All-American Football |
1959 Fleer Ted Williams baseball cards |
This special 80-card set from the Frank H. Fleer Company honors Ted Williams,
"The Splendid Splinter." While other companies vied for Topps' exclusive player
rights, Fleer successfully secured Ted Williams, who, nearing the end of his
career, remained one of the best and most popular players.
Of particular note is Card #68, "Ted Signs for 1959," which pictures him signing
his contract. The photo also included Red Sox GM Bucky Harris, who was under one
of those exclusive deals with Topps at the time. This led to the card being pulled,
making it extremely scarce. Unfortunately, reprints of the card surfaced in the
1970s. This is widely considered the first baseball card to be
reprinted/counterfeited. Interestingly, the counterfeits were allowed to remain
on the market, so caution is advised when dealing with this card.
Cards were sold in both six-card and eight-card wax packs. For some reason,
the scarcer 8-card packs contained no gum.
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.
