Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
I’ve seen a few photos of Cal Ripken Jr. signing his 1992 Donruss Elite Signature Series cards over the years, but this one from Trading Cards April 1992 issue is new to me.
If you’re into this amazing card from the golden era of baseball autograph inserts, be sure to check out my previous post that highlighted a 1992 Donruss Elite Series Advertisement. And I may be working on something else related to this era of cards…
Here’s the Frank Nagy 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner as presented in MastroNet’s Sporst Auctions of Distinction in December 2005. GAI noted the card’s lineage on the reverse flip.
The card’s description in the catalog was pretty fluffy, which I’m not sure is ever really needed for cards of this magnitude. It sold for $456,057.
In a 2007 article about Nagy, Sports Collectors Digest shared that Nagy got the Wagner from Preston Orem in the early 1960s for $100. The T206Resource and net54 board members report that the card is now slabbed via SGC at a 1/2 grade lower of 3.
To add a bit of “Hobby Library” flair to this post, Nagy featured the card on the cover of the November-December 1962 issue of The Sport Hobbyist.
I wonder if a copy of that magazine was included when Nagy’s Personal Collection of Hobby Publications was auctioned off.
For their 1991 release, Topps randomly packed every card from every complete set produced by Topps over the last 40 years in 1991 retail packs, including the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card – though technically, the pricey and oversized cards were a redemption. On top of the instant-win cards, they also offered an anniversary sweepstakes, where they gave out complete sets from all 40 years to 40 winners. But the grand prize was all 40 sets from 40 years of Topps Baseball to a single winner!
The “incredible consumer prizes” were detailed to dealers on Topps’ sell sheets.
Topps then highlighted the instant-win prizes on their boxes, packs, and posters to collectors.
Jack Glenn won the grand prize but ended up selling all the cards, including the 1952 Mantle, to Mr. Mint Alan Rosen for $34k.
Rosen wrote in his book True Mint that even though Topps advertised the cards as being worth a lot more, their grades were only Vg to Ex.
I ran across this ad, from Mastro of all people, in the July 1981 issue of Trader Speaks, looking to sell or trade full unused mint tickets for the world heavy-weight championship boxing match between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott at Chicago Stadium.
He mentions having five different tickets, each with clear portrait photos of the boxers, for $10 each (or for trade).
After exploring the PSA registry, it looks like Mastro was advertising a combination of phantom tickets for April 10th (white, orange, pink, and cream) and the actual fight on May 15th (blue and orange variations). Here are all the examples from Heritage Auctions.
When PSA first started grading tickets, I don’t believe they were not putting the ticket color on the slab, like the following example.
Topps wasn’t going to acknowledge what led to them trying out some new things in their own magazine, but I think we all know the end of the Topps monopoly and competition from Donruss and Fleer drove the innovation.
Nevertheless, Pearlman’s article in Edition 9, The Winter 1992 release of Topps Magazine, provides a nice overview of some unique ’80s releases. In the comments, let me know which one’s your favorite.
Here’s another morsel of card show history, this one from the April 1983 edition of Trader Speaks. It’s an advertisement for the St. Lous Cards Sports Collectors Club and their 8th annual spring sports collectors convention, held May 20-22, 1983, at the Cervantes Convention Center, four blocks from Busch Stadium.
I’d love to see that Lou Brock painting in color; if anyone knows what it is, please leave a comment. I’d also love to time travel back to some of these early ’80s card shows, meet some legends of the game, check out cards before grading, and see what was popular at the time.
Bill Heitman wrote this light-hearted review of the Second National Sports Collectors Convention, held at the Plymouth Hilton in Michigan in 1981. It appeared in the September 1981 issue of Trader Speaks.
A couple of notes: I hadn’t realized the second National was a conversion of an already successful show. Second, it’s cool how tight-nit many “hobby influencers” seemed to be in 1981. Next, I wish today’s National conventions had more seminars like this one. It tracks that Mr. Tiger, Al Kaline, would be a popular signer at a Michigan card show. Bill’s closing quote is PERFECT, “If the spirit of the National Convention survives, we will all still have fun in this hobby.”
PS: The magazine was too big for my scanner, so I did my best to “glue” two scans of separate pages together; this was the “centerfold.”