1924 V122 Willard’s Chocolate Sports Champions Wrapper

Here’s an extremely scarce wrapper from an extremely scarce Canadian pre-war set: the 1924 Willard’s Chocolates V122 Sports Champions.

Ron Oser Entperises offered the 4” x 4” wrapper with a reserve of $100 in their March 1998 catalog. The lot’s description mentioned a 2” tear along one seam.

The V122 set has 56 cards, including three baseball players: Babe Ruth, Eddie Collins, and Ty Cobb. The baseball cards are super pricey; REA sold a PSA 5.5 Babe Ruth for $25,200 in September 2022.

In October 2009, Heritage Auctions sold this wrapper with four hockey cards from the set for $836.50.

They wrote, “Willards Chocolates was a Toronto based firm that produced a few sports theme sets in the mid-1920’s. In 1924 the company produced a 56-card set showcasing athletes from various sports including, baseball, boxing, track and field and hockey. This presentation offers all four hockey subjects: #’s 43 Watson, 45 Collett, 47 Smith and 52 Munro. All four present nicely but were once housed in an album and have paper/glue residue affecting the top portion of the back of each card, Collett has creases. Also offered is a very rare two-color wrapper adorned with a somewhat crude drawing of a runner while promoting “A Picture in Every Bar” of “Willard’s ‘Sports’ Nut Bar.” The rarity of the wrapper explained by the chance to exchange 100 wrappers for “imported chain” for Girls and a “watch chain” for boys. The wrapper has fold lines as issued, plus area of paper damage along the left and right edges, the result of being opened. Despite condition flaws, the wrapper presents at the VG/EX level.”

100 1989 Upper Deck High Number Factory Sets Or A 1952 Topps Willie Mays?

Check out this advertisement from Kit Young from the September 1991 issue of Baseball Cards magazine.

At the time, a complete case of 1989 Upper Deck High Number Factory Sets was $1,495, and a 1952 Topps Willie Mays card in Vg-Ex condition was $575.

For context, REA sold this PSA 4 graded 1952 Topps #261 Willie Mays card for $8700 in December 2023.

And those 1989 Upper Deck High Number Factory Set cases? Well, Steel City Collectibles sold one on eBay for $659 in January 2024.

Topps T-Shirts And Sweatshirts

When this ad was placed in edition 7 of Topps Magazine in the summer of ’91, the price was just $15.95 per t-shirt or $27.50 per sweatshirt, plus $3.25 per order for shipping and handling for Anniversary or Traditional series items.

Apparently, a special edition Mickey Mantle one was available with this 52 Topps card on it and a Babe Ruth, too, featuring his ’73 card. About twenty players were available, including George Brett, Will Clark, Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, Ken Griffey Jr., Gregg Jefferies, Wally Joyner, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Cal Ripken Jr., Nolan Ryan, Darryl Strawberry (Mets or Dodgers), Ozzie Smith, Frank Viola, among others. Checks were payable to Insta Graphic Systems based in Cerritos, CA.

I’m unsure what these look like, so if you have one, please let me know.

Red Grange Last Game Ticket Stub

Red Grange took the field for the last time on January 27, 1935, in an exhibition game at Gilmore Field in Los Angeles, a rematch of the NFL Championship game. Here’s a ticket stub from the game.

Mastro sold this example in July 1998, but I found another one offered by SCP Auctions in January 2008.

This graded example sold for $175 before the recent focus on tickets in the hobby and the run-up in their prices.

1949 Bowman America Salutes The FBI Wrapper

The 1949 Bowman America Salutes the FBI set is one that I only recently discovered while browsing an auction catalog from November 1998 and ran across a photo of the wax wrapper.

Here’s a photo of the front and back of the first card in the set that I grabbed from PSA’s Gallery.

Isn’t it interesting how closely the back resembles its baseball cousin?

Memorabilia Madness – Some Background On The PSA 8 T206 Honus Wagner

I ran across this tidbit about the “PSA-8” graded McNall/Gretzky T-206 Honus Wagner in Topps Magazine’s 6th Edition (Spring 1991). Madness indeed!

The article explains that the Piedmont-backed T206 Honus Wagner achieved the highest price ever (at the time) for a single baseball card, $410k (plus $41k auction fee) during Sotheby’s auction of The Copeland Collection of Important Baseball Cards and Sports Memorabilia in March 1991.

The card’s history is quite infamous, but I have nothing unique to add to that part of the story; check out Wikipedia or the net54 message boards for more info. However, I’m not sure many people today have seen the auction description, including a photo of the back of the raw, pre-graded card.

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