An Advertisement For TCMA’s 1978 Official Minor League Card Sets

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TCMA was ahead of its time, as evident in this advertisement from the June 1978 issue of The Trader Speaks, which offered a subscription to their 1978 Minor League card sets.

You also got to pick from your choice of a free 1975, 1976, or 1977 set when you signed up.

Based on TCDB’s archives, it looks like TCMA printed at least 27 minor league sets in 1978. A few of the bigger 1978 TCMA minor league cards were the Knoxville Knox Sox Harold Baines, Tidewater Tides Mike Scott, Greenwood Braves Brian Snitker, and the first card for hobby favorite Rusty Kuntz.

1953 Stahl-Meyer Meats Complete Printer’s Proof Set

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Just before the 2024 National, there was a lot of noise across the hobby about a PSA 9 graded 1953 Stahl-Meyer Franks Mickey Mantle hitting the market; imagine if this printer’s proof set came up for sale now, too!

First, Sports Collectors Daily has a nice overview if you want to read more about the PSA 9 Mantle, which has an asking price north of $2.5M. Also, here’s a link to the site the card’s owner made to help market it.

Mastro offered the printer’s proof set in their April 2006 Sports Auction catalog.

Here’s the lot’s description:

Here’s one of the rarest of all early 1950’s regional card productions, featuring a selection of the period’s biggest stars from the three New York teams. Stahl-Meyer collectibles were issued only with that single brand of hot dogs (just one card per package) and only in the New York area. When finished Stahl-Meyer cards were created, they were specially cut with rounded corners, and they were covered with a thick wax coating to protect the cards from being ruined by the hot dogs with which the pieces were packed. The bright and clean full set of nine Stahl-Meyer cards here offered was dearly spared any time spent in proximity to meat products. These items have been carefully hand-cut from a proof sheet and were never publicly distributed; with a single exception, they exhibit square corners and carry no protective wax coating. This unique set emanates from a special “find” of nearly 25 years ago, when a small but significant hoard of survivors from Milprint the Wisconsin printer who produced many of the most popular regional issues of the 1950’s yielded groups of treasures from the Stah-Meyer, Dan Dee, Hunter’s, Johnston Cookies and Briggs releases. Described without reference to the hand-cut nature of the items, these proof cards and their respective presentation quality include: Bauer (GD/VG), Campanella (VG), Hodges (GD/VG), Irvin (VG/EX), Mantle (EX/MT), Rizzuto (GD/VG), Snider (VG) and Thomson (VG). The ninth card Lockman, the only waxed, final-process card held in quantity by the printer grades VG/EX. A verifiably peerless complete printer’s proof set, this offering represents an especially glamorous potential addition to one of the industry’s most important collections.

Happy collecting!

1982/83 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Sealed Rack Pack Case

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While individual 1982-83 OPC Hockey rack packs are some of the most common of those OPC released between 1979 and 1989, cases are rare. This one was offered for sale in April 2006.

Interestingly, OPC was the only company to make a major hockey set this year; Topps didn’t issue cards in 1982-83. Anywho, you can see on the case that it held four sealed 24-count boxes, each containing 51-card rack packs from O-Pee-Chee. The set’s key rookies include Dale Hawerchuk, Brent Sutter, Grant Fuhr, and Ron Francis.

The Baseball Card Exchange offered this sealed case for $3,375 at some point in its history (there’s no date online).

BBCE must have offered that case for sale quite a while ago because REA sold this single rack box for $5,040 in late 2023.

To round things out, here’s an example rack pack with Wayne Gretzky’s record-breaker card on top. It sold for $275 in April 2024.

A Bobby Bonilla Advertisement For Ultra PRO Platinum Hologram Pages

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Bobby Bonilla was a spokesman for Ultra PRO in early 1992. Do you think they’re still paying him today, like the Mets?

If you weren’t tracking:

After being traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers part way through the 1998 season, he signed with the New York Mets for a second time in 1999. When the Mets wanted to release him at the end of the year, he negotiated a settlement whereby the Mets would pay him $1.19 million on July 1 every year from 2011 through 2035, a date that has become known in Mets fandom as “Bobby Bonilla Day”. He is also paid $500,000 by the Orioles every year from 2004 to 2028 due to them also having a deferred contract with him.

Wikipedia

PS, I scanned the Ultra PRO advertisement from the April 1992 issue of Trading Cards Magazine.

UCLA Legends Limited Edition Signed Lithograph

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I scanned this advertisement for a ‘limited edition signed lithograph honoring the most dominating collegiate basketball force in history’ from Alan Kayes Sports Cards News & Price Guides Number 5 from April 1992.

Just 2,500 of these 26” x 43” lithographs were printed, and all were signed by Coach Wooden and six of the Bruins’ all-time basketball greats: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Gail Marques Johnson, Keith Erickson, and Mike Warren. Historical Properties priced them at $595.

Today, quite a few are available on eBay; ‘Mill Creek Sports’ has ten, each for $599.

‘Magical World of Sports’ is offering a framed copy for $799.99, ‘AutographForSale’ has one for $899.99, and ‘dary.holl’ has another with an asking price of $1k. I haven’t seen any copies sold on eBay, though.

A Complete SGC-graded 1967 Topps Venezuela Retirado Series Set

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Putting together a complete run of 1967 Topps Venezuela Retirado cards is pretty hard, particularly ones in decent condition, making this complete set of 50 that were auctioned off together in April 2006 all the more impressive.

The lot description noted that Pat Quinn assembled the set one card at a time and upgraded it during his half-dozen 1980s buying trips to Venezuela. This set’s makeup included three cards graded as sevens, four sixes, four 5.5s, 14 fives, 19 fours, and six threes.

PSA’s Pop Report shows around 15-35 graded samples of each card in the set, with the majority graded in the 1-2 range. SGC has graded around ten of each of the 50 cards in the set with similar results.

Hake’s auctions sold a lower-conditioned set of 50 SGC-graded Retirados, from Richard Merkin’s collection, for $7,843 in June 2011. I can’t fathom how much they’d sell for today!

Here’s PSA’s 1967 Venezuelan Retirado set profile:

The 1967 Venezuelan Retirado baseball set is the second segment of a three-part set that also includes the Venezuelan League (#1-138) and the Venezuelan Topps (#189-338). These three sets run contiguous numbers through all three with the Retirado numbering from 139-188. While the first group features the players of the Venezuelan League and the third group consists of Major League Baseball’s stars, the Retirado portion highlights Hall of Famers dating back to the first induction class as well as a handful of more recent stars and potential future inductees. Each card boasts a player portrait in sepia-tone against a blue background with the player’s name printed at the top and “RETIRADO” boldly printed in red at the bottom of the photo. The backs show the player’s personal statistics and a brief biography printed horizontally. Because the set was printed on crude stock paper/cardboard, coupled with a likelihood that many may have been pasted into a scrapbook, the 1967 Venezuelan Retirado set can be difficult for find in high quality. This set is anchored by the likes of Walter Johnson (#139), Lou Gehrig (#141), Honus Wagner (#143), Joe DiMaggio (#145), Ty Cobb (#146), Babe Ruth (#147), Ted Williams (#148), Christy Mathewson (#151), Stan Musial (#157), Sandy Koufax (#162), Satchel Paige (#177) and Jackie Robinson (#184). 

1933-36 Zeenut Pacific Coast League Joe DiMaggio

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Here’s a card I only recently learned about, a 1933-36 Zeenut Pacific Coast League B&W Joe DiMaggio “Minor League” card.

I put “Minor League” in parenthesis because, while the PCL was a minor league, the play was nothing but.

Anywho, I learned about this card after I saw it in a June 2005 catalog. It was a Mastro Classic Collectors Auction, so it didn’t include a description in the catalog. However, PSA has this synopsis on their site:

Produced between 1933 and 1936 by the San Francisco-based Zeenuts Company, this set consists of 166 cards, each approximately 1-3/4” by 3-1/2”. Card fronts bear clear, borderless images of its subject with a right text box boldly identifying (in white-on-black type) the league, player, and team. Card backs are blank. These cardboard classics were originally issued with coupons at the bottom meant to be cut and redeemed for items. The images remained unchanged during the production run, with the expiration dates on the coupons the only way to distinguish their issue year. This set is anchored by two appearances from Joe DiMaggio during his early career with the San Francisco Seals. Card #108 pictures him throwing and card #109 shows him batting. The set is also highlighted by Jimmie Reese (#10) and Vince DiMaggio (#100). Cards that have retained their coupons through the years are highly coveted artifacts. 

Obviously, the pictured card above is a DiMaggio (misspelled DeMaggio on the card) throwing variation without the coupon. Here’s a graded example that includes the coupon. Goldin sold it for $51,660 in May 2021.

Each variation is relatively low-pop. PSA has only slabbed 12 DiMaggio Batting copies, plus three more with coupons, and 17 examples of him throwing, plus five more with coupons.

The hobby has so much breadth and depth!

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