Putting together a complete run of 1967 Topps Venezuela Retirado cards is pretty hard, particularly ones in decent condition, making this complete set of 50 that were auctioned off together in April 2006 all the more impressive.
The lot description noted that Pat Quinn assembled the set one card at a time and upgraded it during his half-dozen 1980s buying trips to Venezuela. This set’s makeup included three cards graded as sevens, four sixes, four 5.5s, 14 fives, 19 fours, and six threes.
PSA’s Pop Report shows around 15-35 graded samples of each card in the set, with the majority graded in the 1-2 range. SGC has graded around ten of each of the 50 cards in the set with similar results.
Hake’s auctions sold a lower-conditioned set of 50 SGC-graded Retirados, from Richard Merkin’s collection, for $7,843 in June 2011. I can’t fathom how much they’d sell for today!
Here’s PSA’s 1967 Venezuelan Retirado set profile:
The 1967 Venezuelan Retirado baseball set is the second segment of a three-part set that also includes the Venezuelan League (#1-138) and the Venezuelan Topps (#189-338). These three sets run contiguous numbers through all three with the Retirado numbering from 139-188. While the first group features the players of the Venezuelan League and the third group consists of Major League Baseball’s stars, the Retirado portion highlights Hall of Famers dating back to the first induction class as well as a handful of more recent stars and potential future inductees. Each card boasts a player portrait in sepia-tone against a blue background with the player’s name printed at the top and “RETIRADO” boldly printed in red at the bottom of the photo. The backs show the player’s personal statistics and a brief biography printed horizontally. Because the set was printed on crude stock paper/cardboard, coupled with a likelihood that many may have been pasted into a scrapbook, the 1967 Venezuelan Retirado set can be difficult for find in high quality. This set is anchored by the likes of Walter Johnson (#139), Lou Gehrig (#141), Honus Wagner (#143), Joe DiMaggio (#145), Ty Cobb (#146), Babe Ruth (#147), Ted Williams (#148), Christy Mathewson (#151), Stan Musial (#157), Sandy Koufax (#162), Satchel Paige (#177) and Jackie Robinson (#184).
Subscribe to The Post War Cards Newsletter!