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.
Auction's most costly vintage baseball cards
The history of vintage baseball card auctions is long and colorful.
T-206 Honus Wagner tobacco cards have sold for upto $2.8 million in
auction. The "Holy Grail of Sports Cards", it's extreme-high auction
value can mostly be attributed to great PR and "auction fever".
It's not close to being the rarest baseball card and Honus Wagner is not
Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle. Yes, the T-206 set is beautiful & special but
because of the # of cards and scarcities, few collector's try to complete,
which should keep auction competition down compared to say 1933 Goudey
or 1952 Topps baseball card issues.
BUT IT DOES NOT...
There's a story Wagner banned his card because he was anti-tobacco
but there are other stories about financial considerations.
You surely have heard of PSA and may even know that this card was the
FIRST they ever graded. But did you know that dealer (B.l. .ast.o name
encoded) admitted tampering with the card, perhaps having it trimmed
down to size, before PSA graded it so highly for the auction.
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1958 Hires Root Beer
Hires Root Beer issued this 66 card set back in 1958. The cards came with an attached advertising tab. Cards with their tab intact are extremely difficult to find and thus are quite expensive. The actual card size varies from 2-3/8 in. to 2-5/8 in. wide and 3-3/8 in. to 3-5/8 in. high without the tab. Cards are numbered from #10 thru #76 with #69 not issued.
The card design - a wood grain "knot hole" through which the player is viewed - is a collector's favorite and was brought back by Bowman for their 2003 Bowman Heritage product. Although small at only 66 cards, the set did contain it's share of cards of Hall-of-Famers and Superstars such as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Pee Wee Reese, Don Drysdale, Richie Ashburn, Bill Mazeroski, Duke Snider, Larry Doby, Don Newcombe and others...
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1952 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
1952 is often thought of as Topps 1st baseball card set, but it was not.
Topps issued several smaller baseball card sets prior to their huge 1952 set.
Topps buzz word was "BIGGER is BETTER" for their 1952 Topps set which
Topps described as: "GIANT IN BOTH SIZE and NUMBER of CARDS" (407).
Key card in the 1952 Topps set is #311 MICKEY MANTLE.
Often called Mickey Mantle's Rookie card - BUT IT IS NOT. That honor
goes to his 1951 Bowman.
1952 Topps "High Numbers" (#311-#407), are very, very scarce with an
interesting story:
This HUGE set was released in series weeks apart. By the last (6th)
series, baseball season was over and football starting.
Candy shops had plenty of baseball cards from earlier series
so most cancelled their orders for the last series creating the scarcity.
Adding interest is how Topps disposed of the now un-needed cards including
THOUSANDS of 1952 Topps MICKEY MANTLE's. They dumped them into the Atlantic
Ocean like most of New York's trash in those days.
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How long have sports cards been around ? (part 2)
The first important and mainstream basketball set was issued by Bowman in 1948.
Other than a Topps set in 1957-58 and a 1961-62 Fleer set, there were no
mainstream basketball sets issued until Topps started producing yearly sets
beginning with their 1969-70 set featuring the rookie card of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
who then went under the name of Lew Alcindor.
In hockey, there were a few sets issued in the 1910's and while O-Pee-Chee issued
some sets in the 1930's, the real modern sets began in 1951 with the itroduction
of Parkhurst's first set.
In racing, while cards go back as far as the early Indy car days of 1911,
modern racing sets began in 1988 with the issues released by MAXX.
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![1971 Topps #161 Coins Checklist [VAR: '161' above #153] - LOT of (25) Baseball cards value](/jpgs/7/1971-161v.jpg)