Sotheby’s auctioned this 1964 Philadelphia Football cello box in 1993. It looks amazing in B&W with all the packs laid out. However, given BBCE wrapping/authentication, it’s unlikely to see a box displayed like this again!
Sotheby’s described the lot as a “full box of 36 ten cent packs, Cello packs have a printed blue, red and yellow wrapper, box is only good condition, packs are untampered with and mostly mint condition.” They expected a final price between $4,000 and $5,000.
While the black-and-white image is pretty nice, they’re actually super colorful, impressively designed, standout display pieces. Of course, they aren’t cheap anymore; Heritage sold this example first-year issue 1964 Philadelphia Football cello box for $32,400 in May 2000.
There isn’t much known about the 1972 Puerto Rican Winter League sticker set, but the albums and sets, which are ‘hobby library historically significant,’ still command a pretty penny when they pop up for sale. REA & eBay offered this one in their July 2000 catalog.
The complete set consists of 231 cards/stickers with a few composite subsets, including card #’s 198-206, which form a photo of Roberto Clemente. Just FYI, some collectors have questioned the set’s 1972 dating and suspect that it may have come out in early 1973; if you own a copy, let me know if there’s any copyright dating inside.
The league included a lot of Major Leaguers looking to brush up on their playing skills during the winter months, often Puerto Rican players and folks at the very beginning or end of their careers. Stars included in this set include Rich Gossage, Orlando Cepeda, Tony Perez, and Frank Robinson (as manager of Santurce), along with Felix Millan, Willie Montanez, Sixto Lezcano, Steve Rogers, Sandy Alomar, Manny Sanguillen, Richie Zisk, Jose Pagan, Elrod Hendricks, Juan Pizzaro, and Ron Cey. But the most significant card in this set is Mike Schimdt’s pre-rookie. REA sold this PSA 8.5 in their Spring 2019 auction for $1,320.
The set also includes a few famous game veterans, like Satchel Paige; they have their own section in the album.
The “Veteranos Famosos Del Baseball” scan above is from a complete album that Leland’s Auctions sold for $1,558.50 in November 2023. They explained that the album has 44 pages, including the covers, and measures 6.4” x 8.75”. All the stickers were “carefully” attached. Here are the front and back covers of Leland’s album.
I ran across this hilarious want ad in the April 1977 issue of The Trader Speaks from a collector looking for a 1947 Tip-Top Bread MIke Tresh card.
Bill Haber wrote that he had 162 different Tip-Tops. If you weren’t tracking, there are 163 cards in the regionally distributed set, so he was missing just one, hence his desire to “pay through the nose” for it.
After a quick online search, I only found a single example. This one was part of a lot of eight 1947 Tip-Top Bread A.L. and N.L. Chicago players. Heritage sold the lot for $74 in June 2009.
PSA has only graded three examples, including this one, which resides in the top-rated set on the registry.
Here’s another historic hoops item: a 1970/71 Topps basketball uncut sheet.
This one features three Pete Maravich rookies, and when it was sold in 2008 by Mastro Auctions, it was the only known example (I’m unsure if this is still true; there are definitely some partial sheets).
The sheet contains 99 fully printed Topps Tall Boy basketball cards from 1970/71 in a 9 x 11 card arrangement. On top of the three Maravich cards are thee each for West, Frazier, Robertson (AS), Baylor (AS), Havlicek (AS), and Cunningham.
Despite some surface creasing and minor issues around the periphery, the sheet was described as being in excellent condition.
The sheet was actually sold by Huggins and Scott Auctions in October 2007 for $4600 before making its way into Mastro’s a few months later.
I suspect the copy from Christopher Sanchirico’s collection is the same one.
And that sheet appears to be for sale on eBay (in May 2024) for $250k.
You can read more about the 1970 Topps Basketball set’s uncut sheets on one of my favorite hobby blogs, The Topps Archives.
Yesterday, I shared a 1950 Topps Bring ‘Em Back Alive One-Cent display box, so today, I figured I’d share the box for the set’s sequel, 1951 Topps Animals of the World!
This one-cent display box was the preceding lot to the Frank Buck’s box in Mastro’s April 2004 catalog. This wrapper accompanied the box.
The box was described as being in near-mint condition, while the wrapper was described as EX.
This set is designated R714-1 by the American Card Catalog, and the cards featured artwork by Mary Lee Baker. They came as singles (1 card per pack for a penny) and perforated 2-card panels (6 cards/5-cent pack), and the panels command a premium. Also, the cards issued as singles have white cardboard stock on the back, while the panels have gray cardboard on the back.
If you want a slabbed wax pack, PSA has graded seven 1950 Topps Bring ‘Em Back Alive wax packs and ten 1951 Topps Animals of the World wax packs.
When you ask a collector to name a Larry Bird card, odds are they will either mention the 1980 Topps Bird, Erving, Johnson triple, or his 1986 Fleer card since they’re two of the most expensive. But collectors who tackle multiple basketball sets will tell you what a tough find a nice 1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird is.
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird Front
1987 Fleer Larry Bird #11 Reverse
It’s widely accepted that the 1987 Fleer set was printed in significantly lower quantities than its 1986 Fleer predecessor. So that already limits the population of Larry’s card in what is a pretty popular set. Then, when you inspect the population report, you will find that the card is super tough to find in high-grade condition.
Of 3075 graded (August 2024), there are only 33 10s (387 9s and 1195 8s). Less than 1% of Bird’s 1987 Fleer cards are Gem Mt 10s. When you compare that to other cards in the set with over 1k regular grades, you can see that only Barkley has a (slightly) more difficult hit rate with PSA 10s. However, the Bird is slightly tougher when combining PSA 9 and 10 populations.
25/3000+ Barkley’s have graded PSA 10, 46/2000+ Ewing’s, 58/3200+ Johnson’s, 215/19500+ Jordan’s, 153/2400+ Malone’s, and 40/3000+ Olajuwon cards.
The Larry Bird is such a tough grade because so many copies have poor centering and registry issues. But why is that? The common belief has to do with the set being printed in 132-card sheets, with 12 rows of 11 cards across. Bird, card #11, was believed to be the last card in the top row (upper right corner), which means it was susceptible to cutting problems.
Despite my reach on social media and throughout the hobby, I couldn’t find a photo of an uncut sheet for a long time. But then I was forwarded a link to a bunch of images from Christopher Sanchirico’s collection, and he owned one! Unfortunately, the image size is small, but you can see the Bird in the upper right corner. In the image’s description, he wrote, “This is one of the only uncut sheets to ever have surfaced from this year (correct me if I’m wrong). Super rare, very colorful, and over 30 years old!”
1987 Fleer Basketball Uncut Sheet
Next, you can see a pair of miscut Bird cards.
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird – Off Center / Miscut
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird – Off Center / Miscut
Even the first of the three PSA 10 Birds pictured below looks surprisingly off-center for a perfect 10 grade.
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird
With the surge and dip of the basketball card market over the past few years, it’s a bit tough to say what these high-grade 1987 Fleer Birds are valued at now. PSA’s Auction Prices Realized for the card show the last two sales being $3,300 in November 2022 and $3,750 in September 2022, but they were over $5k in February 2021 (up to $7500). Those 10s were between $1000 and $1500 between August and November 2020 and about $1200 in May 2020. PSA 9s sold for between $260 and $339 this summer, but they were around $140 in May 2020. PSA 8s have settled around $45, which is where they were in May 2020.
Larry Bird is one of the NBA’s all-time greats who achieved every career highlight or award the league has. His popularity continues today, as seen in the demand for his cards. And while you can’t go wrong adding a 1980 Topps or 1986 Fleer Larry Bird card to your collection (they’re pretty liquid in high grade), his 1987 Fleer card will be a bit more challenging for the condition-focused collector.
Here’s an impossibly scarce Topps display box from their early years as a company that once held 120 penny packs of Frank Buck’s Bring ‘Em Back Alive cards.
Mastro offered this box in their April 2004 Americana Premier Catalog Auction, which included the most ridiculous selection of non-sports cards I’ve ever seen. The box came with the following Canadian-printed wrapper.
The lot’s description said Topps produced the box in 1951, but the community seems to have settled on a 1950 labeling for the set with an American Card Catalog Designation of R714-2 (ACC# R714-2). The box was described as being in near-mint condition, while the wrapper was described as EX.
Heritage sold the following box, which looks like it could be the same one Mastro did, for $504 in May 2024.
Also, for some reason, my Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards 1930-1960 describes this as a Bowman set, but you can see the bottom of the box has a Topps copyright with a 1950 date. I think it was just a typo, though. When referencing it elsewhere in the book, they referred to the set as a Topps-produced one.
The Non-Sports Bible says the 100-card set “was originally issued as 2-card panels that are now quite difficult to find intact. ‘Animals of the World’ is sequel to this set. Panels command a premium due to scarcity.” Despite not mentioning it, I’m pretty sure the one-cent packs had just a single card. And more about the Animals of the World set in tomorrow’s blog post.
