Oh, to be able to time-travel back to July 1998 to bid on this one would make a fantastic addition to the Hobby Library.
The Converse Rubber Shoe Company published its first basketball yearbook in 1922, and it has become a classic. It contains the rules of the game (for that time) and pictures of all the best pro and college teams of the day, including the original Celtics team with Nat Holman.
This particular volume was described as being in excellent condition, with a few tears and minor creases on the back cover.
Converse published the yearbooks annually from 1922 to 1983. The early ones are pricey; a signed 1925 edition is available on eBay for $350, and a 1927 release is available for $130 (June 2024). And while I tracked down a few more 1922 examples online (below), who knows if one will ever come up for sale again?
VintageBasketball.com shared a few words about them here, along with the following picture of the 1922 edition.
I also tracked down these photos on WorthPoint, which I think were part of an old eBay auction that described the book as 64 pages long.
Today, I’m wrapping up my five-part series of articles focused on 1978 Topps baseball and its associated sets and promotions. Here are the previous four articles, in case you missed them:
In this one, I’ll discuss the six-card 1978 Topps uncut panels that came inside issue 47 of Scholastic Inc’s Dynamite Magazine. As a hobby library guy, I find this collectible super appealing.
Dynamite Magazine 101
Scholastic Inc.’s Dynamite Magazine launched in March 1974 and continued to be released through March 1992 (165 total issues). It was Scholastic’s most successful publication and inspired four other magazines you might be familiar with if you were a kid aged ~8-14 at the time; Bananas, Wow, Hot Dog!, and Peanut Butter. It was a bit of a pop culture update and included articles, comics, puzzles, and other interactive content like puzzles, games, masks, etc. They’d often contain inserts like stickers, glow-in-the-dark items, 3-D posters with glasses, and of course, baseball cards.
Dynamite Magazine Issue 47, April 1978, Happy Birthday, Mad!
The issue that included 1978 Topps baseball cards was number 47, released in April 1978, titled “Happy Birthday, Mad!” This edition has over a dozen features, with the headline being “a look at the MADmen and their MAD magazine on its 25th birthday.” Other blasts included a feature about the magazine’s one-year-old horse, how to decorate bicycles, and mini-skits that kids could perform. Shorter pieces, “bombshells,” included cartoons, sneak peek calendars, jokes, puzzles, and advice. The magazine also had a bike poster and, of course, “Free Baseball Cards!”
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Details and Examples
The 1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panels are the same as regular 1978 Topps cards. They’re a six-card strip from an uncut sheet, then folded to fit in the magazine. No one’s really sure if the whole set made it into the magazines. While my 2010 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards wrote that just three six-card panels of 1978 Topps baseball issues had been found at the time, there are definitely more than that, but likely not the entire set because an 11-card wide sheet doesn’t make an even number of 2×3 card panels.
Of the four examples I’ll share, three are cut from Sheet A and one from Sheet B. The Standard Catalog shares two other examples, one with Steve Kemp, Reggie Smith, Roguish Jackson, Rick Burleson, Duane Kuiper, and Davey Lopes, and another with Toby Harrah, Gary Carter, Jeff Burroughs, Fred Lynn, Bucky Dent, and Jim Rice. Both are Sheet A cards. If you’ve seen some from other sheets, please let me know in the comments.
Here’s the example in my library; it features Wayne Garland, Lerrin LaGrow, Enrique Romo, Rick Waits, Rick Manning, and Jim Kern. I bought it for $15.
Here, you can see where the six-card panel was on a regular 1978 Topps uncut sheet (Sheet A).
This second example includes Ellis Valentine, Steve Stone, Willie McCovey, Mark Belanger, Willie Montanez (of Topps Zest Fame), and Mitchell Page.
This panel was cut from the left edge of Sheet A.
This third example is the most famous one and was documented on The Chronicles of Fuji blog in June 2013 after the author sniped it off of eBay for $22.50 + $3.95 shipping. It features Eddie Murray, Amos Otis, Ruppert Jones, Bobby Bonds, John Mayberry, and George Scott.
The Eddie Murray panel was cut from the lower right corner of Sheet B.
By the way, ToddUncommon on Twitter mentioned that there’s a cottage industry of hand-cutting Murray cards from sheets and passing them off as pack-pulled since the in-card pack Murray’s are often terribly off-center.
The following example is slightly inconsistent with the other three, which is interesting since it features superstars Dave Winfield and George Brett, Roy White, Bobby Murcer, Jim Barr, and Cesar Geronimo. It’s been listed on eBay for $49.99 before.
You can see that it’s also a Sheet A cut panel, but it seems to have been inserted oppositely. The first three examples all look the same, with a pair of cards over the edge of the poster on top of the magazine’s index.
If you’re looking for individual panels, they’ll all have a bend across them, just like this 1983 Topps Hot Dog Magazine example.
A handful of examples advertised as Dynamite or Hot Dog panels without bends are probably legitimate cards but not magazine inserts.
Topps partnered with Scholastic for many years, so you can also find examples for other baseball (and football) sets.
1978 Topps Series Wrap Up
That wraps up my 1978 Topps baseball series! From the base set to partnerships with Burger King and Zest Soap, the mail-in checklists, and these six-card panels, Topps certainly maximized their brand’s reach! And I acknowledge that I COULD have included a review of the 1978 O-Pee-Chee baseball set in this series. Do you think I should have?
“How can you say you’ve got the whole set when you haven’t got what it came in?” Here’s Ed Henderson’s look at the collectibility of wrappers from the November 1992 issue of Baseball Cards Magazine.
PS: I’d love to see a resurgence of multi-page hobby writing like this today.
In May 2024, I shared the original football card artwork for Chuck Hunsinger’s 1952 Bowman card and mentioned that the original art was first sold to the hobby in Guernsey’s Topps Auction in 1989, so I wanted to share all the pages from the catalog with every B&W photo.
Not including the 10% buyers premium, the four priciest 1952 Bowman football card original art pieces were $6k for Doak Walker (note: my list says E61A was $6k, which could be Sammy Baugh rather than Doak Walker), $5k for Frank Gifford, $3,750 for Otto Graham, and $3,750 for George Halas.
It would be impossible to track down each piece of original artwork for a single collection today, but I may try to find pictures of them for a page here on the site as a future project. Happy collecting!
The June 1983 edition of The Trader Speaks featured this great piece by Robert Udelson, highlighting four great oddball sets, new for 1983!
You’ll find the first cards commonly called the 1982-83 Neilson Wayne Gretzky Hockey set. And while they’re pretty nifty, the coolest collectible from the set is the 25” x 33” store display sign featuring all 50 cards. Classic Auctions sold this one in November 2017 for $179.
Udelson wrote that the backs of the Gardner’s Brewers cards were very similar to that year’s Topps issue; well, that’s because Topps printed the set! So the hobby now calls the set the 1983 Topps Gardner’s Bakery Milwaukee Brewers cards. The cards remain cheap today. You can grab this pair of graded Yount and Molitor cards on eBay for $50 (July 2024).
The non-standard-sized 23-card 1983 True Value Chicago White Sox cards (2-5/8” x 4-1/8”) would have been tough to assemble in 1983, two at a time, but today, they’re pretty cheap. The Standard Catalog shares that the Sox could not distribute some of the cards because of rainouts, but they were smuggled out to hobby channels anyway; those three cards belong to Harold Baines, Marc Hill, and Salome Barojas.
Frankly, there isn’t much interesting to say about the 1983 L.A. Dodgers Police cards; however, it looks like the partnership to print cards between the Police and the Dodgers lasted a long time. The Standard Catalog lists a set for each year from 1981 to at least 2000, except 1985. This complete set of 1983 cards is available on eBay for $7 (shipped).
I wrote about Alan “Mr. Mint” Rosen’s first book, The Insider’s Guide to Investing in Baseball Cards and Collectibles, previously on the blog – and had really wanted to get a copy of his second book, published three years later in 1994, but resellers on eBay and Amazon had wanted $70-100 for a copy for a few years. I just wasn’t willing to pay that much. Eventually, one of them dropped their price, and it was a race to the bottom. I finally picked up a copy of True Mint – Mr. Mint’s Price & Investment Guide to True Mint Baseball Cards for $10. And just like I did with his previous release, here’s my quick book report and a few scans from this hobby library gem.
Flipping over the first page, you’re greeted with the Table of Contents, and nothing stands out quite like the title of Chapter 2, and it’s fitting the author’s nickname.
You can see that there’s some sort of intro about the art of the deal, a focus on mint cards, things for buyers to be aware of, stories of Mr. Mint’s hobby buys and shenanigans, collections of known folks, a look ahead, and then Mr. Mint’s version of a price guide.
Chapter 1 – The Art of the (Baseball Card) Deal
Rosen starts Chapter 1 with a short autobiography and an interesting story about how he got the nickname Mr. Mint. It wasn’t from his dealer days – he didn’t ONLY buy and sell mint cards, but rather, it was from his collecting days since his friends knew him as being fussy about condition. However, Rosen knew that the name would help him promote his business, so it stuck.
He sold his personal collection in the pages of Sports Collectors Digest, took the money, and became a full-time dealer in 1982. Rosen knew, before many, that making outrageous, nonsensical pronouncements would help his ads stand out, so he wrote things like “Sell me your cards or I’ll jump out of a plane.” He then parlayed that notoriety to get a leg up on his competition at shows, too. He knew advertising didn’t cost; it paid. He also focused on having a good table location at shows.
Rosen knew he needed to know the market well and have a strong rolodex of other dealers, or the advertising wouldn’t pay off. Rosen also was happy to make 10 or 15% on his money but turned it quickly – some dealers lamented that he sold too cheaply. He shared that he never made more than 20% profit in any calendar year, which might sound tight until you realize how significant his volume was (~$6M in 1990).
Interestingly, Rosen didn’t keep any cards. He liked them and would look at them and examine them for a while, but then he’d take a picture to keep before selling it. Rosen mentions a photo library of 25-30k photos.
Chapter 2 – If It Ain’t (Mint), It Ain’t
Rosen explains that by mint, he means as manufactured, so an off-center card can be mint, though it won’t sell for as much. He explains that another mistake is allowing the age of a card to matter in evaluating its condition. Rosen didn’t care if the card was 100 or 5 years old; mint meant new as manufactured. Also, the scarcity of the card didn’t matter towards the condition. He then explains that when it comes to mint cards, he had never seen one go down in price – at least those under $5k because of the minuscule amount of available mint cards. The point is that when you buy quality, when it comes time to sell, you will get the most for your card, which will also be more liquid.
Later in the chapter, you’ll come across this list of Topps and Bowman sets ranked in difficulty for finding mint cards to complete a set, along with two pages explaining it.
Rosen closed the chapter explaining that he didn’t only buy mint cards; he’d buy anything he could make a living on.
Chapter 3 – Buyer Beware
Chapter three has a few paragraphs about each of the following topics: counterfeits, trimming, bleaching, centering, rough cuts, print dots/lines, plastic sheets, slabbing (he wasn’t a fan), and unopened packs.
Chapter 4 – Every Collector’s Fantasy (The True Life Adventures of Mr. Mint and the Most Famous Finds in the Hobby)
This was by far my favorite chapter in the book, chronicling a lot of the famous finds you hear about. He covers the 1952 Topps find in great detail, along with a few others like the 1948 Leaf Rare Numbers Find, the 1932 US Caramel Find, the Kansas City Bowman Find, Dan Wells Florida Find, and the purchases of a lot of famous collections like those of Ted Koch, Herb Ross, Dan Wells, and others. However, I’ll highlight a few photos he included from the Paris Tennessee Find(s) since I had written about it on the blog before. If you want to know about the others, pick up a copy of the book or wait for me to write another article!
Chapter 5 – Card Styles of the Rich and Famous
Chapter 5 starts with Rosen describing the reunion show he put together with 32 members of the 1961 Yankees team. He paid them $7k for doing the show, but Mantle, Berra, and Ford got more. They laid out $725k for the show and wound up making $10k (they mistakenly held it on Mother’s Day). The chapter continues with stories about purchases and interactions with folks like Del Webb (one of the owners of the Yankees from 1947-1964), Lou Boudreau, Dale Mitchell, Leslie Wagner-Blair (granddaughter of Honus Wagner), and Al Downing, among others.
Chapter 6 – Around the Corner
This chapter is only three pages long and sort of mimics the hobby’s position today. In 1994, Rosen wrote that card sales were terrible at the time and that folks selling cards from 1981 to the present were going out of business left and right. His numbers were down to $3M from $6M in sales a few years earlier. He said the avalanche of new cards was the primary reason for this.
Rosen wrote that the lack of finds at the time also hurt things, noting that most of his were from before 1991. However, if you check out sites like Sports Collectors Daily, you’ll find those have spiked again.
Mr. Mint wrote that he saw positive signs for the vintage card business, highlighting the 1952 Topps Mantle, which has surged in popularity in the last few years.
Chapter 7 – Mr. Mint’s Price Guide
Pages 89 – 302 are Mr. Mint’s price guide. Each set has a description, some of his thoughts and insights about value/availability/scarce cards, a checklist and prices for mint cards, and a photo or two.
He even included a ton of less mainstream but collectible oddball-esque sets like Wilson Franks.
Conclusion
As I wrote in my review of Rosen’s previous book, this one also included a ton of sound, practical, and applicable advice to collectors, even thirty years later. What sets this one apart, particularly for fans of the hobby history, are the collections of stories from his finds, relationships, and shows. I highly recommend grabbing a copy – it’s a quick read too!
Alan Rosen was one of the hobby’s first and most famous sports card dealers—some say infamous. In 1991, with the help of Doug Garr, he published a fantastic book called Mr. Mint’s Insiders Guide to investing in Baseball Cards and Collectibles.
The subheading on the cover read How to buy, sell, and make money on your collection: Inside tips from the world’s #1 dealer in baseball cards and sports memorabilia. This post is my synopsis, interpretation, and connection to today’s hobby of what he wrote. And let me start with my most significant takeaway; despite being published over 30 years ago, it parallels today’s market really well. Or, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
First, I bought my copy from eBay, and it looks like I picked up a signed copy. Does anyone know if this signature looks legit? Let me know in the comments. Real or not, the book remains an excellent addition to my hobby library.
The book starts with Rosen’s acknowledgment, in which he credits a trends piece Doug Garr was writing about the future of baseball cards as its genesis.
Before I jump into the bulk of my review, I have to say that I don’t view cards as investments; they don’t create cash flow. I consider my collection an expense, maybe an “investment” in my happiness, but with no expectation of a future financial return. Do I notice arbitrage opportunities to flip collections? Sure, but to me, that’s not investing; it’s work.
Anyway, I feel like one of Rosen’s first lines, in his Author’s Note, should be read repeatedly by today’s modern card investors. Rosen writes, “This book has been prepared to be of value to both the neophyte collector/investor and the seasoned veteran. Perhaps, too, even a few smarmy teenagers who’ve been wheeling and dealing Ryne Sandberg and Jose Canseco cards will also learn a few lessons about the often volatile and capricious world of baseball cards and collectibles.”
The introduction discusses how Rosen got into cards. He then pointed out that his edge was that almost no one was dealing full-time, and the keys to his success were having a lot of capital to outbid people and always going after the highest-grade material. Rosen was called out for “destroying the hobby” because he advertised his significant finds and flaunted the financial side of things. But he countered, saying he brought more eyes to the modern market; change is inevitable.
The next two chapters cover a few of Rosen’s early deals, the growth of the hobby at the time, and the number of people in the market just for profit, not as a hobby. He’s speaking directly to the investor side when he wrote that making money on cards isn’t that easy but that if you study the market, you can be successful. He also noted that there are opportunities in up or down markets, but it takes work. I don’t think many newer hobby entrants realize how much effort it takes to have sustained success.
Rosen also writes that there is only a market for vintage cards because moms threw cards out. So his advice is never to do anything rash. He then gives some practical advice, like reading box scores, opening some packs, and learning to handle cards. He recommended signing up for a couple of the prominent hobby publications at the time. There aren’t as many today, but there are more blogs, videos, etc. The key is knowing to ignore 80% of what is being advertised or discussed, but that knowledge only comes with education.
Chapter three focuses on developing a field of interest, learning about the types of people and buyers in the hobby, and knowing who you are. He acknowledges the need to float and reminds people that they have to sell what they buy, essentially saying not to fall in love with what you have. A dealer who sits on his inventory isn’t a dealer; they’re a museum curator; look at some of the “dealers” at the National Convention who aren’t selling anything. Rosen emphasizes quality and not quantity and that specialization can help speed up your education in the hobby.
I particularly liked how he differentiated between scarcity and rarity; scarcity is the mintage, and rarity is now many have survived and surfaced in the market. A key lesson then and today is that if you haven’t seen something before, resist the urge to make an offer on it.
Chapter four is called Learning to Grade Cards. In it, he emphasizes condition condition condition because if you buy the highest-quality card you can find, then when you’re ready to sell, you only have one thing to argue about, price.
It’s interesting how pessimistic he was about the emerging third-party authenticates at the time, perhaps because he felt that was his edge. But Rosen was prescient in saying that, among other things, it would inflate the prices of top-quality cards.
I thought the chapter about where and how to find great buys was going to be an out-of-data chapter before reading it, given those were the pre-internet days, but it ended up being more about negotiating than finding cards. His advice was to consider what you can make on something and asked if you would rather make 10% on a deal in a day or 100% in a year. He mentioned that the local card shop wasn’t the place to buy things if you’re looking to make money, but it’s a great place to meet other dealers and collectors (look what is happening at Burbank Sports Cards). He also said card shows are super important networking events.
Chapter six is about investing in complete sets. Rosen says you should, pre-1975, because card companies printed modern sets in such huge numbers, and the only way to target them is in huge numbers at significant discounts; I’m just not sure how relevant that is in 2022 (the modern set part). The current market feels more about the chase and numbered cards. This is funny because Rosen writes that gimmicks are almost always bad long-term investments; cards that jump big on release tend to drop just as fast and further – 2022 Pain Prizm WWE boxes come to mind today. To take advantage of market timing for sets, he said to buy at the end of the season when dealers tend to dump products. However, he emphasized that it’s hard to make a mistake even paying retail for sets before 1975; that market isn’t as volatile as the modern, rookie card-driven market.
He next spoke about NY syndrome and the Mickey Mantle aura, explaining that Mantle is more valuable because of where he played and that home runs are more powerful than batting average. He mentions that retired Hall-of-Famers can’t strike out anymore, card prices rise as a player approaches a potential HoF induction, and that cards are worth more in their team’s locale (Sandy Koufax rookie cards in Los Angeles are SUPER liquid today).
The following three chapters dealt with autographs and memorabilia. His basic advice was to avoid stuff unless or until they’re a Hall-of-Famer. Additionally, this is excellent advice: don’t touch cut signatures of 3×5 index cards with a ten-foot pole; there are so many fakes. Also, when it comes to autographs, solo signed items are a bigger deal than when a star is included with a bunch of random teammates (other than Ruth and Gehrig). Rosen also discourages buying bats, especially for active players, because eventually, the market will flood with their stuff. Last, his recommendations for tickets are to buy only ones with seat numbers and only buy uncut sheets with star cards.
Chapter 8 dealt with auction psychology. Because of the internet, things are a bit different today, but his advice is still applicable. Rosen said to be weary of any auction that doesn’t have photos of every item. He recommended only entering bidding toward the end and not entering a bidding war against a known collector if you want to make money.
Next, Rosen discussed counterfeits. While the hobby is doing better today concerning fakes, there will be cons wherever there is big money. The older an item is, the more careful you need to be. His best advice was about determining if a card has been altered; he said to hold it up to the light, and if the corners are translucent, it’s probably been messed with.
In Chapter 13, Rosen listed his investment strategies for the ’90s. What’s funny is you would probably see a similar list from a lot of collectors today. Here’s his Top 11:
Any card from the nineteenth-century
Adrian C. Cap Anson and Larry Napoleon Lajoie items
1919 Black Sox Players
Negro League items
High-grade 1969 Topps sets
High-grade 1958 Topps sets
High-grade 1954 Topps sets
1914 Crack Jack cards
Any star cards from the T-205 or T206 tobacco series
1933 and 1934 Goudey cards
Pre-80 Unopened Material
He especially advised avoiding 1964 Topps since it lacked big star rookies and being careful of the 1973 to 1974 Topps drop-off. Rosen also felt that 1953 Topps was overpriced at the time and that 1948-55 Bowman had stalled.
He followed up his picks with chapters on selling and caring for your items. His biggest advice was to keep your cards in motion, that profit is a function of time, and that it’s better to sell during the baseball season than off-season. And from a care perspective, storing items in cool, dry places and no movement means no wear.
He closed, emphasizing not holding inventory longer because it could go up a little more. Again, move your material; there’s no risk in taking a profit. Also, as he said earlier, it’s better to have one great item over many small ones. However, today, you may need to start small to build a bankroll.
His closing thoughts included a final list of maxims that boiled down to six things:
Don’t get emotionally involved with items
Learn to grade
But the best condition cards you can
If you’re unsure about authenticity, pass on the item
Buy Hall of Famers, preferably deceased ones
Invest, don’t gamble (i.e., rookie speculation)
While people have varied opinions about Mr. Mint Alan Rosen, his book has a lot of really sound, practical, and applicable advice even thirty years later. I highly recommend picking up a copy, if for no other reason than it’s a great piece of hobby history! Happy collecting!