The 1975 Ty Cobb Commemorative Card Series and a 1977 Trader Speaks Advertisement

While flipping through the February 1977 issue of The Trader Speaks, I came across an advertisement for a set that’s seldom discussed today: the 1975 Prager Publishers Ty Cobb set.

The ad offered complete sets for $2.95, or two sets for $5.00, from Stephen Mitchell of Edmonds, Washington. While the set’s never been particularly popular, it remains an interesting collectible that combines baseball history, publishing, and the hobby’s growing mail-order marketplace of the 1970s.

Here’s how The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards describes it:

This set was produced by Washington state collector Stephen Mitchell in conjunction with Praeger Publishers of New York to promote the Book “Ty Cobb” by John McCallum. Slightly larger than the current 2.5 x 3.5 standard, the cards featured black and white photo on front surrounded by a woodgrain-effect frame and with a plaque at bottom bearing the card title. Back have an excerpt from the book, an ad for the book and a facsimle autograph. cards are numbered in a baseball at upper-right. Sets originally sold for $3.25.

The catalog notes that complete sets originally sold for $3.25, but the February 1977 Trader Speaks ad offered them at a slight introductory discount. I also wonder if the set should be dated to 1977 instead of 1975, when the book came out.

Today, complete sets can still be found pretty easily, with mint examples selling for around $50 (click here to see examples on eBay). Here’s a complete set, fronts and backs, I found on Reddit. You can see that the first 18 cards have excerpts from the book.

One of the more interesting aspects of the issue is the original packaging. Surviving examples show the sets being mailed in plain manila-style envelopes (with Mitchell’s return address matching The Trader Speaks ad), a simple presentation that reflected the mail-order nature of many hobby items during the era. These have been offered on eBay for $45 (with two of four sold in early June 2026), described as “factory sealed” with the cards protected by cardboard on both sides.

More than fifty years later, the cards remain an affordable and attractive tribute to one of baseball’s most legendary figures.

Happy collecting!

P.S. Here’s an example of a PSA graded copy, one of 91 they’ve slabbed.