Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
This high-grade 1935 R331 National Chicle football complete set was offered for sale in Mastro’s August 2003 Sports Premier Catalog Auction and would rank in the Top 10 of the PSA Registry today.
The highlight was definitely the PSA 7 Bronko Nagurski. In the lot’s description, they wrote that the minimum bid of $3500 was only half of the SMR value of the Nagurski card alone at the time. That means, in 2003, a PSA 7 Nagurski was $7k. Well, REA sold this one for $105k in the summer of 2022.
This original, uncut sheet of 132 different cards from the 1962 Topps football set was auctioned off in April 2004.
The 27-3/4” x 42-1/2” Ex-conditioned panel presents many of the set’s high-profile stars and short-prints, including Ditka, Groza, Davis, Meredith, Starr, Hornung, Gregg, Jordan, Tarkenton, McElhenny, Tittle, Gifford, Layne, Kilmer, and Brodie.
These black-bordered sheets are incredibly scarce. The only reference I can find online to them is from The Vintage Football Card Gallery, which has a page dedicated to virtual uncut sheets but includes a photo of the other second-half sheet a collector sent him.
Check out The Uncut Sheet Archive for more!
This photo of “The Ultimate 1959 Topps Football Display Box and Wrapper Collection” is from a May 2000 auction catalog.
Tracking down a 1-cent and 5-cent display box along with those three wrapper variations wouldn’t be easy today, particularly in a single lot.
But for a truly complete unopened run, you’d need to track down full packs, a cello pack/box, and a vending box—and it won’t be cheap; REA sold the following 1959 Topps football cello box for $81k in 2021.
I’ve never seen any 1959 Topps football cases, so I wonder if any (empty) exist. If you know of one, let me know.
Check out The Unopened Archive for more!
You don’t see original artwork used for the 1952 Bowman football large and small issues up for sale very often, and when you do, they’re pricey! Even in 2000, when Ron Oser offered this example featuring Chuck Hunsinger, it had a minimum bid of $375 and was the first they had ever offered.
The brightly colored piece was described as 4” x 6 1/8” with minor corner wear; otherwise, it was in excellent condition. Oser included the example card in the lot.
Over the years, REA has sold most of the publicly offered examples (since they were first offered during Guernsey’s Topps Auction in 1989 with estimates of $300-400 per lot – more on these another time). Three of the priciest have been the card artwork for:
#28 Kyle Rote – $2962 in the spring of 2013
#29 Hugh McElhenny – $2666 in the spring of 2013
#61 Leslie Richter – $2340 in the spring of 2024
Check out The Original Artwork Archive for more!
The February 1993 issue of Baseball Cards feature called Readers’ Choice not only had a reader call (incorrectly, IMHO) the 1951 Bowman Paul Richards card the worst baseball card of all time, but it also featured this gem from Dan Tisdale about a pair of 1974 Topps football cards.
Here’s each card in full color. What do you think? Are these the worst football cards? Lineman didn’t get the love from Topps in the ’70s!
A lot of people remember the April 2004 Mastro auction for the incredible unopened material they sold from, I believe, OPC’s archives. Perhaps overlooked a bit were all the empty vintage Bowman and Topps football display boxes they sold a few years later in 2008.
It’s tough to put prices on items like these today in 2024, given the run-up in vintage unopened/display items, but here are a few sales:
Check out The Unopened Archive for more!
In the fall of 1990, Topps Magazine did a ‘Focus on Football’ listing the 100 most valuable Topps football cards on the market.
Prices aside, how do you like the order? One thing I like is that three checklists made the top 10!
Here’s the magazine cover in case you want to pick one up.
