The Industry

Original Artwork For The Unproduced 1958 Topps Don Drysdale and Early Wynn Card

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I ran across this incredible original artwork of Don Drysdale and Early Wynn in an April 2000 Ron Oser Enterprises auction catalog. They advertised it as an unissued original that didn’t make the cut for the 1958 Topps series.

The striking piece was described as being 4 1/2” x 6”

1958 Topps wasn’t the first set to feature multiple players on a card. 1953 Bowman Color had a Rizzuto/Martin card and a Berra/Bauer/Mantle. 1954 Topps had the O’Brien Brothers’ card. 1957 Topps had the Yankee’s Power Hitters and, my favorite, the Dodgers’ Sluggers.

Topps then included Slugger’s Supreme, World Series Batting Foes, and Rival Fence Busters in the 1958 set before expanding to 17 baseball combination cards in their gigantic 1959 release.

If you know anything else about the history of the Drysdale/Wynn card, please let me know. Oh, what could have been!

Update 1: Keith Olbermann wrote, “It’s possible. But Wynn didn’t go to the White Sox until 1958 and Drysdale didn’t make an all-star team until 1959. It’s much likelier this is from the ’59 ASG or World Series, and was rejected from the 1960 set.”

1950’s Wonder Bread Advertising Sign With Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial

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Here’s an early to mid-1950s Wonder Bread Cardboard advertising sign that features black and white portraits of Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial.

Mastro offered it in their July 1998 catalog and described the multicolored, blank-backed counter sign as 10-1/2” x 14-3/4” in Ex to Mt condition but with minor restorations. They also implied the Stan Musial fountain pen signature was authentic. The minimum bid was $1k.

The Mantle looks a little like the 1957 Jay Publishing New York Yankees Picture Portfolio “card,” but a touch wider.

The Musial looks a lot like one of Musial’s 1958 Jay Publishing “cards” (All-Stars Set A, All-Stars Set B, St. Louis Cardinals Set A, and St. Louis Cardinals Set B).

1961 Post Cereal Advertising Display Sign

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I recently discovered that this 1961 Post Cereal baseball advertising display sign existed when I found it inside an auction catalog from April 2000.

The cardboard sign was described as being a 28” circular heavy cardboard sign with blow-up pictures of nine 1961 Post Cereal cards, including Willie Mays (autographed) Whitey Ford, Nelson Fox, Roy Face, Pete Runnels, Lew Burdette, Ken Boyer, Jim Gentile, and Jim Lemon.

The auction presumed that some printed advertising in the center was probably missing.

It appears that Collect Auctions re-sold the same sign in November 2018 for $1160. They included this close-up of the Mays card (with a Beckett Authentication Service endorsement).

Upper Deck Promotional Sheet Checklist

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The September 1992 issue of Baseball Cards Magazine is special because it deep-dives into Upper Deck’s earliest years. One of my favorite things they included was this checklist of all the sets, but primarily all of their promotional-sheet issues.

You can read that they credited Don Butler, with the assistance of Jeff Kurowski and Nigel Spill, with putting it together for Sports Collectors Digest.

Here are two of the sheets pictured in the magazine.

1962 Jello Baseball Advertising Poster With Mickey Mantle

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It seems like the food-issue category is getting more hobby love lately – so here’s a 1962 Jello Baseball Advertising Poster featuring Mickey Mantle.

This example was offered for sale in November 2000. It was described as a 28” x 33” thin-coated stock display poster heralding the availability of baseball cards with JELL-O Gelatin Dessert featuring the most popular figure of his generation, Mickey Mantle.

1957 Topps Paul Hornung Rookie Card Original Artwork

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Here’s the original artwork used as the foundation for the 1957 Topps Football Paul Hornung rookie #151.

The flexichrome, a full-color painting on a black-and-white photograph, is 3-3/8” x 4-3/4”, larger than the finished card. The back of the art piece has working pencil marks and adhesive residue.

The item came from the 1989 Guernsey’s Auction, where Topps sold a large portion of their archives.

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