Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
John This has to be the most incredible grouping of 1966 O-Pee-Chee Batman card collectibles the hobby has ever seen. Two display boxes, 58 packs, 10 sets, 218 singles, and 11 uncut sheets.
Mastro offered the lot in their April 2004 Americana Premier Catalog Auction.
The early ’90s Sotheby’s Important Baseball Cards and Sports Memorabilia auctions were packed with incredible material; one example is this run of 93 World Series Series Programs dating from 1936-1992 (including, of course, my favorite, The Out Of This World Series).
This particular Sotheby’s auction was held in March 1993, and the lot had an expected closing price of $12k—$15k. Here’s the full description:
Run of World Series Programs: 1936-1992, ninety three programs, complete run from 1936 through 1992 inclusive, a very significant group which includes the Miracle Mets, every Yankee Championship from 1936 with Gehrig and DiMaggio through 1962 and the Mantle/Maris years, the great New York battles of the late 40’s and into the mid 50’s between the Giants, Dodgers and Yankees, every great star is featured, including Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Tom Seaver, Roy Campanella, Sandy Koufax, Al Kaline, Reggie Jackson, Pete Rose and up through to today’s modern day superstars, World Series programs are very substantial, loaded with pictures and records, and historically significant, exceptional condition with no program less than excellent but overall most programs are near mint or better condition.
Sotheby’s offered this circa 1935 uncut sheet of Diamond Stars when they sold Copeland’s collection in 1991. The cards were meant to be the high numbers for the R327 set issued by National Chicle Gum Co.
In the lot’s description, Sotheby’s wrote, “This sheet turned up in a discovery of material from the relative of a printer for The National Chicle Gum Co. which included a few uncut sheets and several pieces of original artwork (issued and unissued). The offered sheet is the only known copy.”
When SCP auctions resold the sheet in April 2016 for $62,256, they included the following photos for the lot, including the back (Sotheby’s sold the sheet framed).
Here’s the full description from the 2016 SCP Auction:
The 1934-36 R327 Diamond Stars Baseball set is one of the most beautiful ever produced. Its unique art deco renderings, player selection, and other eclectic nuances have captivated generations of collectors. Although the final checklist for the multi-year set reaches as high as #108, apparently there were plans to take it higher. The proof lies in this lone surviving copy of a 1936 R327 Diamond Stars Baseball uncut sheet showing 12 more cards that made it to the drawing board and beyond.
This spectacular uncut sheet turned up in a discovery of material back in the 1980’s from a relative of a printer for the National Chicle Company, producers of the Diamond Stars series. Also included in the find were a few regular issue uncut sheets and some baseball original artwork (both issued and unissued). The magnificent piece offers 12 art deco images of 13 players, including one featuring Hall of Fame St. Louis Browns teammates Rogers Hornsby and Jim Bottomley, one of the first multi-player cards produced in a major card issue in the 1900’s. Also included on the sheet are Hall of Famers Vernon “Lefty” Gomez and Goose Goslin plus Phil Cavaretta, Lon Warneke, Mel Harder, Benny Frey, Pete Fox, Linus Frey, Rip Collins, Roger Cramer, and Gene Moore. All have crystal clear images with outstanding color and detail. This is the only Diamond Stars high series sheet and cards known to exist. Sheet has full production front with printer’s marks and a blank back. One very slight crease crosses the lower right corner in the white outside of the card images. This unique sheet was originally offered in the 1991 Sotheby’s Copeland Collection Auction. A few years later it sold for an amazing $75,000. In 1997 it was displayed at the National Sports Gallery in Washington, DC. One of the finest known uncut baseball card sheets in the hobby in beautiful high grade condition.
Absent from the hobby for almost 20 years the time has come for another collector to become the steward for this extraordinary one-of-a-kind rarity. In an era of collecting where the hunger for rarity, “low-pops” and 1 of 1’s is ever increasing, this historic pre-war “cardifact” is sure to whet some appetites. SCP Auctions is honored to present the one and only 1936 R327 Diamond Star uncut sheet of never issued high numbers.
Joan Rubenfeld’s article about the 1991 Anaheim National in Allan Kaye’s Sports Cards News & Prices Guides premier issue in October/November 1991 is a wonderful piece that still holds up today!
Here are a few of my favorite lines:
And finally, “Next time there is a sport card show in your neighborhood, and particularly if there is a ‘biggie’ like the National Convention, go to it!”
You’ll occasionally find a 1952 Topps Wings cello pack for sale, but wax is far scarcer. So I was pretty surprised when I ran across this nearly complete 5-cent wax box from an April 2004 auction catalog.
This lot was for a “marvelously well-preserved, two-part Wings display box that once held thirty-six 5-cent packs of the aviation-themed treasures. Thirty of the unopened wax packs are still nestled inside and, with their 8” x 5-5/8”x 1-1/2” lidded counter-sales box, they recreate the vision of a confectioners display from more than a half-century ago.”
The box was described as Near Mint and the packs as Excellent to Mint. The lot also included this flattened wrapper.
As far as I can tell, PSA has only slabbed two 1952 Topps Wings wax packs: the following PSA 7 and another graded 8, which includes a 5-cent designation on the flip. There are 30 cello packs in the Pop Report.
However, The Baseball Card Exchange did offer this “1952 Topps Wings Wax Unopened Box (1 Cent)(120 Packs)” for sale on their website for $16k a while ago, and there are a few GAI-slabbed wax packs, too.
In July 2009, Dave and Adam’s Card World purchased an item that neither they nor anyone else in the hobby had ever seen or believed existed: a 1990-1991 OPC Premier Hockey vending case.
1990 OPC Premier hockey was the first high-end hockey product. The release had a great rookie class, great design, and limited availability, so they were hot out of the gate. Boxes went from $30-40 to over $250 pretty quickly.
However, two significant developments in the hobby affected the O-Pee-Chee Company at the time. First, 1990-1991 OPC hockey cards showed up at a few shows before their official release, and second, there was a big wave of counterfeiting of OPC products at the time, as their simple paper stock made them easy targets for forgers who were printing runs of star cards.
The original owner of the case of 1990 OPC Premier vending boxes had been assisting OPC with their investigation, so as a thank you, Gary Koreen, the President of OPC Company Limited, sent him a vending case of approximately 10,000 Premier Cards. In his correspondence, Gary mentioned that they did not produce vending cases of this product.
And it’s true, OPC only made their premier cards available through foil packs in boxes and via a factory set. They did make vending products for the base product, though.
Also, the date of the letter, February 22, 1991, made it clear that the case could not have been a later release; it had to be 1990-1991.
The case was factory sealed, brought to the National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland for the July/August 2009 show, and slapped with a $6k price tag. Reed Kasaoka mentioned, in an interview with Beckett at the show, that the collector may have missed the case’s peak value, potentially over $20k, had he sold it when the cards were selling for over $200 a box.
Dave and Adams sold the case back then, and to this day, no one has any reason to believe it’s not legit; the correspondence helped remove a lot of doubt.
What price do you think this unique 1990-1991 OPC Premier hockey vending case would fetch at auction today?
—— Update Since Original Posting ——
I originally posted this story here on the blog in August 2022; shortly after that, the dealer who sold it to Reed Kasaoka contacted me to share a few more details, which I published in The Post War Cards Newsletter #27 (the newsletter is now defunct) in March 2023.
The person who sold it to Reed (let’s call him Owner 3 so as not to use real names) wasn’t the original owner; the 1st owner was Ronald Mastro (whose name is written on the case pictured above), who sold it to Owner 2 who was Owner 3’s business partner.
When Owner 2 bought the case from Ron, Ron said that OPC President Gary Koreen hired him (Ron) to investigate and deal with the ongoing theft problem at OPC. Ron was to figure out who and how people were stealing numerous cases without any trace. Ultimately, Gary was pleased and thankful for Ron’s help in controlling the theft problem. So besides Ron’s compensation, Gary decided, as a courtesy, to give Ron the 1-of-1 vending case of 1990-91 OPC Premier Hockey Cards, which no one knew existed, and Ron promised never to get rid of.
Well, Ron sold it to Owner 2 for $10k, who then sold it, for unknown reasons, to Owner 3 for $5k. After about 12 years of owning the case, someone in the sports card world told Reed that Owner 3 had this one-of-a-kind item that no one knew existed, so Owner 3 got contacted by Reed. At the time, hockey cards had hit an all-time low, so the vending case didn’t have much value, no matter how rare it was. So, Owner 3 wanted to get the case out of his safe. First, he contacted Gary Koreen to let him know he possessed the vending case and asked if it was really a 1-of-1. Gary wasn’t happy to find out Ron sold the case but confirmed it was real.
Owner 3 offered the case to Reed for $3k, but they settled on $2k since that was approximately the break-up value of the 10k cards in the case. It had a $6k price tag at the 2009 National, but I don’t know what it sold for or who has it now.
The 1950 Japanese Menko baseball card set features 52 leading Japanese players printed as playing cards, plus a joker featuring Babe Ruth. This uncut sheet was offered for sale in August 2003.
It’s one of the few times that Babe Ruth appeared on a Japanese card. The sheet was described as being 15” x 10-1/4”, off-center left, printed on both sides with a slight darkening on the back at the bottom, and with minor soiling at the lower right on the front that doesn’t affect any cards; EX/MT overall.
I don’t know much about Japanese baseball cards, but I did pick up a few books for the Hobby Library by noted niche expert Gary Engel.
Also, these sheets seem relatively common (Engel confirms this in the 6th Edition of his Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide, mentioning that this set is generally found as an uncut sheet), with recent prices averaging a few hundred dollars but trending up; there are a few outliers over $1k.
You can download a digital version of Engel’s guide here.