Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
I wrote a dedicated article about 10 Incredible Topps Baseball Team Cards in February 2021, highlighting their importance to the hobby. In my wrap-up, I mentioned a Cubs team card as a card to consider beyond the ten. A few weeks ago, while looking through some recent auction results, I noticed the 1971 Topps Cubs … Read more
I’m continuing my series of posts defining checklist groups or eras in the post-war sports card market. I previously documented the Golden Era of Topps Baseball Checklists and the Retro Classic Sports Card Checklists. I’m calling this group of cards the Post-War OG Sports Card Checklists; post-war because I know of at least the N173 … Read more
I was reading hobby Twitter the other day, and someone commented that they thought 1957 Topps was a response to the 1953 Bowman Color set. The thing is, Topps already owned the Bowman brand since early 1956, so they didn’t need to “respond” to anything. However, I think the classic Bowman set likely influenced Topps’ … Read more
Bob Pettit was considered the best basketball player in the game when Topps printed their first basketball issue in 1957. So it’s no surprise that they printed more copies of his card in laying out the 80-card set on a 132-card sheet than any other. This article will go deeper into Pettit’s career, the 1957 … Read more
Recently, I Tweeted out a picture of a vintage hockey checklist that sold for well over $1k. A collector commented, asking me what my pick for the checklist that was most worthy of a high dollar value. And while I was about 2.5 hours into a 4-hour indoor bike ride on my turbo trainer, the … Read more
The NBA season is winding up, so it’s time to focus a bit more on vintage basketball cards here on the blog. I thought I’d start with a quick overview of the most significant sets in the hobby. 1948 Bowman, 1957 Topps, and 1961 Fleer are usually called the ‘Big 3’, 1969 Topps is considered … Read more
I’ve written about 1957 Topps a bit before on the blog. First, when I talked about the 4 Contest Cards, and a few months later, the 1957 Topps Cello Pack came up in a conversation about wrappers used in cello packs between 1957 and 1961. With the set’s popularity, it’s no surprise the unopened wax … Read more
If you look closely at the 1957 Topps #95 Mickey Mantle card’s right side, you can see that Topps tried to air-brush someone out of the card. But who is this out-of-place figure? Rumor is that Topps washed out a maintenance worker who was walking by. But the remaining silhouette allowed collectors in 1957 to … Read more
I’ve been on a bit of a sports card error kick lately, last week writing about a few of my favorite Vintage Football Error Cards. Today, I’ll focus on some unique post-war baseball card errors that Topps made in the printing process. 1957 Topps #20 Hank Aaron If you take a close look, you … Read more
The 1957 Topps baseball set is one of the most popular in the hobby. It features color photographs and established the card size that the industry adheres to today. The cards also featured, for the first time, multiple-year player statistics. But more importantly, there are a huge number of Hall of Famers in this set. … Read more