Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
The 1949 Bowman America Salutes the FBI set is one that I only recently discovered while browsing an auction catalog from November 1998 and ran across a photo of the wax wrapper.
Here’s a photo of the front and back of the first card in the set that I grabbed from PSA’s Gallery.
Isn’t it interesting how closely the back resembles its baseball cousin?
I ran across this tidbit about the “PSA-8” graded McNall/Gretzky T-206 Honus Wagner in Topps Magazine’s 6th Edition (Spring 1991). Madness indeed!
The article explains that the Piedmont-backed T206 Honus Wagner achieved the highest price ever (at the time) for a single baseball card, $410k (plus $41k auction fee) during Sotheby’s auction of The Copeland Collection of Important Baseball Cards and Sports Memorabilia in March 1991.
The card’s history is quite infamous, but I have nothing unique to add to that part of the story; check out Wikipedia or the net54 message boards for more info. However, I’m not sure many people today have seen the auction description, including a photo of the back of the raw, pre-graded card.
I’ve never been a massive fan of the wood-grained 1962 Topps design like others, but the wax box and pack designs that year were awesome!
The two display boxes and unopened wax pack pictured above were offered for sale back in 2004. The pack is an “Extra/Stamps” variation; one of the 5-cent display boxes has “All The Great Major League Stars” as its front panel slogan, while the other features the “Extra/Stamps” front slogan, with a “Mr. Retailer” and “Dimes” lid-top design.
Interestingly, the “Extra/Stamps” design is featured on the 1962 Topps dealer sell sheet floating around the hobby.
Also, it’s a tough find today, but here’s a 1962 Topps 1-cent Wax Pack Box.
In the fall of 1990, Topps Magazine did a ‘Focus on Football’ listing the 100 most valuable Topps football cards on the market.
Prices aside, how do you like the order? One thing I like is that three checklists made the top 10!
Here’s the magazine cover in case you want to pick one up.
I’ve always felt team sets were a great, accessible, and inexpensive hobby niche. So here are 200 1961 Jay Publishing Unopened Picture Pack Team Sets that were sold together in late 2004.
Jay Publishing Co. actually made a variety of team collectibles in the late ’50s and ’60s, including yearbooks and picture packs. These contained 5” x 7” black-and-white baseball “cards” from specific teams and were popular ballpark collectibles. Each bag had 12 cards and originally sold for 25 cents.
This particular lot included twenty GAI-graded picture packs.
Here’s the original artwork painted for the 1953 Topps Bob Young card.
By the way, there isn’t a single PSA Gem Mint 10 graded copy of this card in the Pop Report, so 9s are >$1k.
This is an incredibly cool piece related to the 1934 Goudey baseball set, sometimes called the “Lou Gehrig Says…” series; Chuck Klein’s signed endorsement contract to use his picture and name on cards in the set.
You see, Gehrig’s name and picture (blue background) are used on the bottom of most cards in the set.
But 12 (cards 80-91) feature Klein’s (red background) who had just come off a Triple Crown season.
The 7” x 8-1/2” document, dated July 18, 1934, defines the business agreement. A sample 1934 Goudey card featuring the “Chuck Klein Says…” ad is attached to the top of the document.