Baseball Cards

A Tasty Collectible: The 1963 Milwaukee Sausage Co. Seattle Rainiers Set

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The 1963 Milwaukee Sausage Co. Seattle Rainiers set includes 11 unnumbered, 4 1/4” square cards cut from retail packaging. Blue tinted with a bit of red and yellow, the set features players like Billy Macleod and several future MLB players. Most cards show stains, evidence of their original purpose.

I actually first learned about this set after running across that Billy Macleod example while flipping through Mastro’s December 2005 catalog. While it shows some mild creases and the back was described as having some creases, it was “responsibly” cut from its retail packaging, so it’s one of the nicer examples of any cards you can find from this set. 

For example, REA sold these Pete Jernigan and Bill Macleod cards for $180 in September 2023, clearly in poor condition at best.

You can read a bit more about the set on SABR’s blog, but the additional info is that:

  • The set’s player photos are the same as that year’s popcorn cards.
  • The team was affiliated with the Red Sox, and a few players saw time on the team, the most famous being Mel Parnell and Pete Smith. 

Both of whose cards are available on eBay right now (December 2024) for $1,899 each!

However, the Parnell looks different from the following example that MHCC sold for $159 in May 2012.

Given the scarcity of these cards, sales figures can vary wildly; Love of the Game Auctions sold this Macleod for $1,440 in the summer of 2023.

And just for completeness, TCDB has an example of a card that’s uncut from its packaging. If you know more about this particular example, please let me know in the comments.

A set born from sausages and stained by purpose; the 1963 Milwaukee Sausage Co. cards are a flavorful slice of hobby history that’s hard to resist.

Happy collecting!

Why the 1990 Score McDonald’s Baseball Cards Are Worth A Lot More Than a Happy Meal

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You can grab a 1990 Score baseball factory set for under $10, but the 25-card McDonald’s version? With only 4,000 reportedly made (vs. who knows how many millions of base cards), it commands 40x the price!

I have to acknowledge that I only recently discovered the existence of this set after looking back through the May 1992 issue of Sports Collector Digest’s Sports Card Price Guide Monthly and skimming Jeff Kurowski’s hobby commentary.

However, while Kurowski wrote that the cards were only available in Boise, Idaho, The Standard Catalog wrote that they were also available in eastern Oregon:

This 25-card set was released exclusively at 11 McDonald’s restaurants in Idaho and eastern Oregon. Four cards were given with a large fries-soda purchase. Production was reported at 4,000 each. The cards have front borders of graduated purple shades around a game-action photo. Backs are similar in format to regular 1990 Score cards and include a portrait photo. The McDonald’s logo appears on front and back. Fifteen World Series trivia cards were part of the promotion.

BaseballCardPedia adds that the cards were only available for about three weeks in the spring of 1990. Others have presumed these cards were part of a trial pulled by McDonald’s before being implemented nationwide.

Here’s an example of a 1990 Score McDonald’s card, Ricker Henderson’s, #5, graded Gem Mt 10 from PSA that sold for $313 back in October 2016 by PWCC (now Fanatics Collect).

As I said, the sets are pricey; this ungraded example was sold on eBay for $489 on December 9, 2024.

This example, with all of the trivia cards, sold on eBay for $525 on September 28, 2024.

I haven’t been able to track down any sales of complete graded sets, but there are a handful out there, including four active ones in the PSA Set Registry; PSA has graded 680 cards across the set (as of mid-December 2024), so more are possible.

I suspect we may see a few more PSA or SGC-graded examples pop up; back in November 2024, a collector offered dozens of them on a Facebook group before mentioning he would move them to eBay later (some were already graded).

And here’s an example of the 4-card wrapper.

In late 2021/early 2022, a collector picked up a handful of packs on eBay, so there are a handful of unopened packs floating around, though I haven’t seen a graded one, which would potentially be a four-figure collectible!

Not so junky junk-wax, huh?

From $121K to $50M? Revisiting the Iconic 1952 Mantle and Other 1996 Hobby Highlights

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Doug Kale published this piece in the January 1997 issue of Sports Card Trader, highlighting three significant sports collectibles events: The 1996 East Coast National, the Superior Sportscards Auction, where Marshall Fogel bought his 1952 Topps PSA 10 Mantle for $121k, and the September 21st sale of the Greztky/McNall T206 Wagner for $640,500.

There’s been talk around the hobby that the 1952 Topps PSA 10 Mantle cards could be worth $50M now; before Fogel displayed the card during the 2021 All-Star Game, he said he had rejected a $25M offer for it.

Here are a few photos from the Colorado Rockies Facebook page from that event.

For a bit more, Sports Collectors Digest has a nice piece about how Topps’ 1952 Mickey Mantle Became the Most Iconic Card in Hobby History.

For more about the infamous T206 Wagner’s history, click here.

Happy collecting!

One Of The Rarest Junk Wax Era Baseball Cards – The 1993 Topps Nikon House Celebrating Baseball Card

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Mario Alejandro introduced me to this card in his tweet from March 2024, and then I ran across the following picture of it in Issue 15 (Summer 1993) of Topps Magazine.

First, here’s a screen capture of what Mario wrote about the card

And here are the images he attached to the tweet.

Unfortunately, in their Topps Magazine blurb, Topps doesn’t add much more to the story. Mario alluded to the back of the card, which invited folks to show up at the Nikon House on Tuesday, April 13th, from 6:00-8:00 p.m. after RSVPing to Rebecca Kirisits. But that means the card had to have been distributed before then.

Perhaps it was handed out by Topps’s “paparazzi,” whose photos were displayed at Nikon House.

By the way, PSA has a single example, a gem mint 10, in its Pop Report.

Let me know if you have any more info about this card.

And happy collecting!

A Scarce Early Process Proof 1962 Topps Baseball Uncut Sheet

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It may be because I recently published The Uncut Sheet Archive, but I’ve been seeing a lot of awesome uncut sheets lately while perusing old catalogs lately, like this 1962 Topps uncut proof!

Ron Oser Entperises offered it in their April 2001 catalog and included the following description:

With 43 cards appearing on a 21″ x 28″ blank backed partial process proof sheet. Includes: Bunning, Snider, Kaline AS, Aparicio, Ford AS, Zimmer, etc. Only includes the actual photos used for the cards without the baseball card information. There is some moisture damage around the edge on the front with heavier damage on the reverse. Of the stars only the Bunning is affected. Minor creasing is also apparent.

Here’s an example of the final 1962 Topps Snider (top right corner of the sheet) and Ford All-Star cards for comparison (bottom row, third over).

There are quite a few production proof sheets in the archives of the major auction houses, but just a handful are actual photo-based. For example, REA sold this one, which included a handful of photos from the 1959 Topps set. It sold for $1,860 in the summer of 2019.

On the football card side of the house, Heritage sold this 1962 Topps Football Player Portraits Uncut Proof Sheet with 44 Players, including the Tarkenton Rookie, for $1,920 in December 2024.

Happy collecting!

Incredible Auction History – A Lot For Mickey Mantle’s 1967 Topps Stand-Ups Regular and Proof Cards

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The 1967 Topps Stand-Ups are one of the scarcest Topps test issues, though Topps likely intended them as a 1968 release. Anyway, I ran across a December 2004 auction that featured both the Mickey Mantle proof and die-cut versions!

First, here’s what The Standard Catalog has to say about the set:

Never actually issued, no more than a handful of each of these rare test issues have made their way into the hobby market. Designed so that the color photo of the player’s head could be popped out of the black background and placed into a punch-out base to create a stand-up display, examples of these 3-1/8” x 5-1/4” cards can be found either on thick stock, die-cut around the portrait and with a die-cut stand, or as thin-stock proofs without the die-cutting. Blank-backed, there are 24 cards in the set, numbered on the front at bottom left.

In 2010, they priced the thick stock, die-cut set at $75k, and the thin stock, proof set at $60k. As for the dating, SABR has a great article explaining the likely intended release of 1968. Mantle is the set’s key player, followed by Clemente, Mays, and Aaron.

I’ve only found one other sale of a Mantle Stand-Up card when, in April 2005, Memory Lane Inc. sold the following GAI-8.5 graded die-cut example for just under $10k.

For SA, PSA has a single example of each Mantle variation in their Pop Report.

And since I run The Unopened Archive, here’s the lone wrapper example: Lelands sold it for $3k in November 2008.

TCDB includes this photo of what’s likely the only display box; the same one, I believe is shared in the article Standing Tall on The Topps Archives who shared a few more unopened items from the set in a piece called Yaz Sir!

Exploring Big League Collectibles’ 1982/83 Diamond Classics and 1983 Original All-Stars Sets

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In the spring 1983 issue of Baseball Cards Magazine, Big League Collectibles advertised their 1982/83 Diamond Classics and 1983 Original All-Stars collector sets, which were limited to 10,000 sets.

The only thing I need clarification on about the advertisement is whether the Diamond Classics offer was for both series that made up a set – I suspect it was just Series 1, but more on that thought another time! Series 1 had 56 cards (including the checklist) and came in a numbered, boxed set.

The cards were printed on thick stock in a 2 1/2” x 3 3/4” format. Here’s an example of DiMaggio’s card.

The other key cards in the first series were Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinso, and Mickey Mantle.

Big League Collectibles released the second series of Diamond Classics cards in 1983, also in individually numbered boxed sets. The key cards were Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, and Hank Aaron. 

The Original All-Stars From the Game of the Century set honored players from the first modern All-Star Game, which was held in conjunction with Chicago’s World Fair in 1933.

The boxed sets were also individually numbered out of 10,000. 

Unless autographed, all these cards are super affordable.

Happy collecting!