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.
1955 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
1955 Topps was the first of 2 years of horizontal card designs.
As with 1952, 1953 & 1954, cards were again a tad larger than today's
standard. A nice feature, facsimile autographs, again appeared on the cards.
The set came in 2 series, #1-160 and scarcer "High Numbers" #161-210.
Due to the contract battles between Topps & Bowman, Cards #175,186,203 & 209
were never issued. Topps eventually won the war, buying Bowman making 1955
the last year for Bowman cards. But the damage was done as Topps had to
leave out many stars including Mickey Mantle & Stan Musial.
There were a total of (15) Hall of Famers in the 1955 set !!!
Top ROOKIEs: Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax & Harmon Killebrew
Top Stars: Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Al Kaline, Ernie Banks, Warren Spahn,
Jackie Robinson, Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra & Duke Snider.
"The Golden Greek" Harry Agganis, a popular 1955 Topps card, is a tragic
story, Agganis, a rising young star, died after his first card was issued.
A football star at Boston U., he turned down an offer from the Cleveland
Browns and became the starting first baseman. Shortly after he came down
with pneumonia and died of a Pulmonary Embolism.
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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1952 Wheaties Champions
In 1952 Wheaties issued this set of cards on the back of their boxes.
The 2" x 2-3/4" cards needed to be hand cut from the back of the boxes
making high quality samples almost impossible to find. The set featured
30 different champions from a variety of sports in both "Portrait" and "In-Action"
poses for a total of 60 different cards. 10 of the 30 athletes are baseball players
with football, basketball, golf, bowling, diving and other sports also
included.
Top players in the set are Ted Williams, Stan Musial, George Mikan,
Ben Hogan and Otto Graham.
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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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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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