1966 Pure Oil Atlanta Braves Baseball Card Set and Checklist

1966 Pure Oil Atlanta Braves Specs

Year: 1966

Title: Pure Oil Atlanta Braves

Size: 8-1/2″ x 11″

Number in Set: 12

1966 Pure Oil Atlanta Braves Overview

Pure Oil sponsored this 12-card series of Atlanta Braves cards to honor the team’s first year in the city. They commissioned Nicholas Volpe, who is said to have painted more movie stars than any other artist in America, to draw the portraits. The artist rarely gets a bio on the back of a player’s card, but a few sentences about Volpe were included beneath the player’s vitals, biography, and stats but above the sponsor logo.

The fronts feature Volpe’s incredible pastel portraits and a small, full-figure action picture against a black background. The player’s and artist’s facsimile autos are included as well. The image is framed within a white border, which consists of the player’s name in all capital black letters centered along the bottom.

The cards were given away with gas purchases and are unnumbered. I wonder where the original portraits are!

PSA has only graded 18 1966 Pure Oil Atlanta Braves, 16 Hank Aaron’s, and two Eddie Mathews cards.

1966 Pure Oil Atlanta Braves Significant Sales

Robert Edward Auctions sold the following picture complete set of 12 Vg-Vg-Ex portraits for $120 in January 2023.

1966 Pure Oil Atlanta Braves REA Set – Image 1

1966 Pure Oil Atlanta Braves REA Set – Image 2

In 2014, Kevin Savage Cards sold a set for $27. And as of late November 2023, the following set was available on eBay for $119.

I haven’t found many examples of individual sales, but a raw Hank Aaron sold on eBay for $20 in October 2023, and two of the graded PSA examples are currently (November 2023) on eBay; a PSA 4 Ed Mathews offered for $300, and a PSA 1.5 Hank Aaron offered for $200.