Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
John The following advertisement for the 1982 New York City Superstar Baseball card show is one of the best I’ve ever seen.
It was published in Trader Speaks’ March 1982 issue, and the handwritten style stood out among many mechanical-looking ads. Plus, Monte Irvin and Pee Wee Reese were signees!
I’ll also mention that dealer tables were $85, which is more than many regional shows charge today.
Happy collecting!
In 1993, Sotheby’s offered this Quaker Oats Babe Ruth Advertising Sign in their Important Baseball Cards and Sports Memorabilia auction. Sign me up for this club!
The sign was described as a multi-color, large (16 by 20 inches) cardboard die-cut stand-up advertising sign showing prices for the Quaker Oats Babe Ruth baseball club.
REA sold an identical, possibly the same, display in the spring of 2008 for $1292; they dated it to 1934 and acknowledged it had been restored.
In the description, REA noted Quaker Oats produced other similar signs for grocery stores. Here’s another one I found online, dated to 1935.
If you’re still interested in joining the Babe Ruth Baseball Club, membership cards pop up for sale from time to time. This one, with an original envelope, sold for $168 in 2023.
More about these Babe Ruth advertising signs and the Baseball Club in future posts!
This is a one-of-a-kind production relic for the five-cent wrapper for the 1965 Topps Battle series. Ex-Topps Vault.
I presume Mastro was the first auction house to sell this item after the consignor acquired it from Topps Vault. They wrote it up as printed on glossy paper, measuring 11-1/8” x 10” with penciled-in editorial notes.
After a quick Google search and perhaps a few more owners (who knows!), Hake’s Auctions re-sold it in March 2013 for $172. The editorial note on this scan says, “Fill in white shots on blue plate” referring to the white dots above the black square advertising an “Extra Military Emblem In Each Pack.”
While the following 1965 Topps Battle wrapper has a different advertisement on the left-hand side, the white dots were removed.
Hake’s included the following scan of the official COA from the Topps Vault.
I’ve been getting into baseball postcard collecting lately; here’s one of my favorites, published by the Angels’ radio and TV sponsor, Falstaff Brewing.
I was attracted to this niche after I flipped through Tuff Stuff’s Baseball Card Postcard Collection by Ron Menchine and saw so many interesting items.
Here’s how Menchine described the Angels piece.
One could wonder if this one is really a postcard; it’s ~6 1/4” x 9”, but I’ve seen other postcards about that size. A collector told me it’s likely an unused, team-issued item to which a person would have either typed/written a shipping address or applied a delivery address label.
Bonds shattered the single-season HR mark with 73 in 2001, and someone managed to put together a complete run of 61 full tickets from each of his home run games.
The lot was available for sale in Mastro’s April 2002 catalog, and each was described as being in NM/MT to MT condition.
The keys were home run #60 on September 6 vs. the Diamondbacks, #70, which tied Mark McGwire for the single-season home run mark on October 4 vs. the Astros, #’s 71-72 when he set the new single-season home run mark on October 5 vs. the Dodgers, #73 when he established the new record on the last game of the season on October 6 vs. the Dodgers, and #6 on April 17 vs. the Dodgers which was his 500th career home run.
A lot of the tickets were obtained from season ticket holders by a collector who started the set on the first game of the season.
Topps Magazine usually had a section up front called “Fans Notes,” essentially letters to the editor. The first “note” in the Summer 1991 edition was from a reader who read about the Desert Shield cards in the Winter 1991 issue and was frustrated because he had not seen any yet (he was a LCpl). He wrote that he searched and managed to buy a few and thanked the magazine for their contribution.
The magazine then shared the following incredible story and picture from a GI who was a reserve nurse and Topps photographer:
If you’re interested in getting the issue with this picture in it, here’s the cover:
I ran across this 1872 Harry Wright CDB (Warren Studio Red Stockings) in Mastro’s December 2001 catalog; it’s the same image that Old Cardboard and TCDB reference for the card.
The Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards describes the set as follows, “The champions from the premiere season of baseball’s first professional league (some wearing their championship pins), are pictured on these cartes de visites. Members of the Boston Red Stockings were photographed at a local studio, most of them being pictured in coat-and-tie with only Harry Wright in uniform. The cards measure about 2-1/2” x 4-1/4” with sepia photos bordered in white. In the bottom border is the name and address of the studio; information which is repeated on the otherwise blank back. Player identification is not found on the card but can be deduced by studying contemporary team pictures.”
The example of Harry Wright pictured above has a heavy crease the center; despite this flaw, Mastro still graded the card Vg due to its visual appeal. I don’t know what it sold for, but my 2016 Standard Catalog gives it a book value of $10k in NM, $5k in E, and $3k in Vg condition. If this card came up for auction today, I’d guess it would easily double the NM value.