Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
A couple of weeks ago, I shared a few tweets and an update in Newsletter #29, highlighting some cool empty cases that Collect Auctions sold in their March 2023 Spring Auction. The Topps Archives, an extraordinary hobby blog, also featured some of these cases in a pair of articles titled “Shipping Out” and “Highly Anticipated.” … Read more
In the world of vintage sports card collecting, Topps is THE brand. For decades, the company has produced some of the industry’s most iconic and sought-after cards. Among these treasures is the 1982 Topps Baseball set, which includes the rookie card for Cal Ripken Jr. And, recently, collectors have been buzzing about the sale of … Read more
A while ago on Twitter, I shared links to the 1961 Topps and 1961 Fleer football Unopened Archive pages, and someone asked how it was that both Topps and Fleer had a license to print AFL and NFL cards in the same year. We also noted that it was weird that it was midway through … Read more
There’s a lot of fraud in the modern sports card market, particularly in vintage unopened products. One of the significant frauds has been folks who modify rack packs and replace cards with stars cards on the front or back. So I thought I would share some information about which panel the stars should be in … Read more
Historically, quality control was never a forte of the Topps company. And people with a background in printing will tell you that throwing material away is equivalent to throwing money away. Therefore, when it comes to vintage unopened, there are a lot of examples, and random variations, to the way Topps packaged and distributed cards … Read more
I’ve written about being a checklist collector a few times and why I enjoy the hobby niche so much. In this article, I will run down some of my favorite checklists, a bucket list of sorts. These aren’t just low population, super expensive cards (though some are pretty pricey), but simply the cards I’m aiming … Read more
The other day a collector emailed me a story he had written for Sports Collectors Digest many years ago about a few cards that are (almost) impossible to find. He thought I’d be particularly interested in the story about the 1954 Bowman #66 Ted Williams card that was yanked from production and replaced with teammate … Read more
I love uncut sheets of sports cards. They make excellent display pieces, and they’re often scarce, they provide set education, finish “master” collections, and provide hobby integrity. So despite the storage problem, they continue to be popular collectibles. But how did these sheets make their way to the market if cards were meant to be … Read more
The sports card hobby is full of interesting quirks and tidbits. Perhaps some of these factoids will make for longer, dedicated blog posts in the future, but in the meantime, here are ten random (and short) post-war baseball card facts. 1 Topps released cards in dedicated series through 1973, usually releasing a new series every … Read more
Willie Mays was a baseball icon. Arguably the greatest center fielder of all time. He was a 24x All-Star, a World Series Champion, a 2x NL MVP, he won the NL Rookie of the Year award, earned 12x Gold Glove Awards, was a 4x NL Home Run Leader, and 4x NL Stolen Base Leader. Mays … Read more