While flipping through Mastro’s June 2007 Classic Collector catalog, I ran across this fantastic 1962 Bazooka Bubble Gum box featuring Bob Allison, Eddie Mathews, and Vada Pinson “on the back”.
The 1962 Bazooka set consists of 45 cards issued as 15 three-card panels on the backs of 20-piece boxes of Bazooka bubble gum. The cards are unnumbered, but the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards assigned them numbers 1 through 45, making Allison, Mathews, and Pinson cards #1-3. Sports Collectors Daily also identifies three panels, #1 Allison/Mathews/Pinson, #11 Romano/Banks/Siebern, and #15 Zimmer/Killebrew/Woodling, as short prints.
Complete boxes are considerably tougher than either individual cards or intact three-card panels.
Robert Edward Auctions offered what appears to be the exact same box in its Fall 2019 auction. They submitted the box to PSA, where it received a Poor 1 grade, noting moderate-to-heavy creasing. REA called it the only example ever graded by PSA at the time and noted that it had seen only a handful of complete 1962 Bazooka boxes offered at public auction over the previous 20 years. It sold for $570.
It remains the only Allison/Mathews/Pinson complete box in PSA’s Population Report today.
Happy Collecting!
P.S. If trying to track down a complete box feels a little ambitious, there are usually a few 1962 Bazooka cards and panels floating around on eBay.
P.P.S. Card Ladder also only has four 1962 Bazooka Allison/Mathews/Pinson panel sales in its database.
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