Here’s another historic hoops item: a 1970/71 Topps basketball uncut sheet.
This one features three Pete Maravich rookies, and when it was sold in 2008 by Mastro Auctions, it was the only known example (I’m unsure if this is still true; there are definitely some partial sheets).
The sheet contains 99 fully printed Topps Tall Boy basketball cards from 1970/71 in a 9 x 11 card arrangement. On top of the three Maravich cards are thee each for West, Frazier, Robertson (AS), Baylor (AS), Havlicek (AS), and Cunningham.
Despite some surface creasing and minor issues around the periphery, the sheet was described as being in excellent condition.
The sheet was actually sold by Huggins and Scott Auctions in October 2007 for $4600 before making its way into Mastro’s a few months later.
I suspect the copy from Christopher Sanchirico’s collection is the same one.
And that sheet appears to be for sale on eBay (in May 2024) for $250k.
You can read more about the 1970 Topps Basketball set’s uncut sheets on one of my favorite hobby blogs, The Topps Archives.
Yesterday, I shared a 1950 Topps Bring ‘Em Back Alive One-Cent display box, so today, I figured I’d share the box for the set’s sequel, 1951 Topps Animals of the World!
This one-cent display box was the preceding lot to the Frank Buck’s box in Mastro’s April 2004 catalog. This wrapper accompanied the box.
The box was described as being in near-mint condition, while the wrapper was described as EX.
This set is designated R714-1 by the American Card Catalog, and the cards featured artwork by Mary Lee Baker. They came as singles (1 card per pack for a penny) and perforated 2-card panels (6 cards/5-cent pack), and the panels command a premium. Also, the cards issued as singles have white cardboard stock on the back, while the panels have gray cardboard on the back.
If you want a slabbed wax pack, PSA has graded seven 1950 Topps Bring ‘Em Back Alive wax packs and ten 1951 Topps Animals of the World wax packs.
When you ask a collector to name a Larry Bird card, odds are they will either mention the 1980 Topps Bird, Erving, Johnson triple, or his 1986 Fleer card since they’re two of the most expensive. But collectors who tackle multiple basketball sets will tell you what a tough find a nice 1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird is.
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird Front
1987 Fleer Larry Bird #11 Reverse
It’s widely accepted that the 1987 Fleer set was printed in significantly lower quantities than its 1986 Fleer predecessor. So that already limits the population of Larry’s card in what is a pretty popular set. Then, when you inspect the population report, you will find that the card is super tough to find in high-grade condition.
Of 3075 graded (August 2024), there are only 33 10s (387 9s and 1195 8s). Less than 1% of Bird’s 1987 Fleer cards are Gem Mt 10s. When you compare that to other cards in the set with over 1k regular grades, you can see that only Barkley has a (slightly) more difficult hit rate with PSA 10s. However, the Bird is slightly tougher when combining PSA 9 and 10 populations.
25/3000+ Barkley’s have graded PSA 10, 46/2000+ Ewing’s, 58/3200+ Johnson’s, 215/19500+ Jordan’s, 153/2400+ Malone’s, and 40/3000+ Olajuwon cards.
The Larry Bird is such a tough grade because so many copies have poor centering and registry issues. But why is that? The common belief has to do with the set being printed in 132-card sheets, with 12 rows of 11 cards across. Bird, card #11, was believed to be the last card in the top row (upper right corner), which means it was susceptible to cutting problems.
Despite my reach on social media and throughout the hobby, I couldn’t find a photo of an uncut sheet for a long time. But then I was forwarded a link to a bunch of images from Christopher Sanchirico’s collection, and he owned one! Unfortunately, the image size is small, but you can see the Bird in the upper right corner. In the image’s description, he wrote, “This is one of the only uncut sheets to ever have surfaced from this year (correct me if I’m wrong). Super rare, very colorful, and over 30 years old!”
1987 Fleer Basketball Uncut Sheet
Next, you can see a pair of miscut Bird cards.
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird – Off Center / Miscut
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird – Off Center / Miscut
Even the first of the three PSA 10 Birds pictured below looks surprisingly off-center for a perfect 10 grade.
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird
With the surge and dip of the basketball card market over the past few years, it’s a bit tough to say what these high-grade 1987 Fleer Birds are valued at now. PSA’s Auction Prices Realized for the card show the last two sales being $3,300 in November 2022 and $3,750 in September 2022, but they were over $5k in February 2021 (up to $7500). Those 10s were between $1000 and $1500 between August and November 2020 and about $1200 in May 2020. PSA 9s sold for between $260 and $339 this summer, but they were around $140 in May 2020. PSA 8s have settled around $45, which is where they were in May 2020.
Larry Bird is one of the NBA’s all-time greats who achieved every career highlight or award the league has. His popularity continues today, as seen in the demand for his cards. And while you can’t go wrong adding a 1980 Topps or 1986 Fleer Larry Bird card to your collection (they’re pretty liquid in high grade), his 1987 Fleer card will be a bit more challenging for the condition-focused collector.
Here’s an impossibly scarce Topps display box from their early years as a company that once held 120 penny packs of Frank Buck’s Bring ‘Em Back Alive cards.
Mastro offered this box in their April 2004 Americana Premier Catalog Auction, which included the most ridiculous selection of non-sports cards I’ve ever seen. The box came with the following Canadian-printed wrapper.
The lot’s description said Topps produced the box in 1951, but the community seems to have settled on a 1950 labeling for the set with an American Card Catalog Designation of R714-2 (ACC# R714-2). The box was described as being in near-mint condition, while the wrapper was described as EX.
Heritage sold the following box, which looks like it could be the same one Mastro did, for $504 in May 2024.
Also, for some reason, my Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards 1930-1960 describes this as a Bowman set, but you can see the bottom of the box has a Topps copyright with a 1950 date. I think it was just a typo, though. When referencing it elsewhere in the book, they referred to the set as a Topps-produced one.
The Non-Sports Bible says the 100-card set “was originally issued as 2-card panels that are now quite difficult to find intact. ‘Animals of the World’ is sequel to this set. Panels command a premium due to scarcity.” Despite not mentioning it, I’m pretty sure the one-cent packs had just a single card. And more about the Animals of the World set in tomorrow’s blog post.
Oh, to be able to time-travel back to July 1998 to bid on this one would make a fantastic addition to the Hobby Library.
The Converse Rubber Shoe Company published its first basketball yearbook in 1922, and it has become a classic. It contains the rules of the game (for that time) and pictures of all the best pro and college teams of the day, including the original Celtics team with Nat Holman.
This particular volume was described as being in excellent condition, with a few tears and minor creases on the back cover.
Converse published the yearbooks annually from 1922 to 1983. The early ones are pricey; a signed 1925 edition is available on eBay for $350, and a 1927 release is available for $130 (June 2024). And while I tracked down a few more 1922 examples online (below), who knows if one will ever come up for sale again?
VintageBasketball.com shared a few words about them here, along with the following picture of the 1922 edition.
I also tracked down these photos on WorthPoint, which I think were part of an old eBay auction that described the book as 64 pages long.
Here’s a great item from the days of auction past: a 1966 Topps baseball full uncut blank-back proof sheet featuring 11 Hall of Famers.
Mastro offered this one in their May 2008 Sports & Americana auction catalog and included the following description:
An incredible eye-catcher, this very scarce uncut sheet offers unrivaled star power! With its content derived from the issue’s 2nd Series, the 132-card proof sheet’s roster is filled with Hall of Famers, including Alston, Banks (2), Brock (2), Cepeda, Ford (2), Killebrew, Morgan and the rookie card of Palmer. Measuring approximately 28″ x 43″ the blank-backed item’s fully printed obverse depictions are arranged in an 11-card-by-12-card configuration. The sheet presents about EX display quality, and reflects inevitable, scattered surface wrinkling (affecting many individual subjects, including one Brock, one Banks and the Killebrew designs) and marginal faults incurred during factory handling and rolled storage.
REA sold a proof sheet with the same card layout in the Spring of 2021 for $2,880. After reading about the condition and inspecting the paper loss and borders, it’s likely the same sheet Mastro had offered 13 years earlier.
Here’s a pretty cool item that Mastro auctioned off in March 2000: a 1969 Topps Test Set Uncut Sheet.
There are nine players on the sheet, including Carl Yastrzemski. However, Topps only used the Yaz image in the deckle-edge insert set that year. The auction description pointed out that the deckle-edge cards use similar black-and-white images with the player’s signatures across the bottom third of the cards, so it’s likely that this heavy cardboard sheet was made in that issue’s preparation. And since uncut deckle-edge sheets show identical card layouts and spacing, it’s possible this one was an early proof.
In an article about 2018 Heritage cards, SABR wrote a few words about these proof sheets, “I discovered that Topps did a test run for deckle edge in ’68 that was never distributed. There are uncut proof pages and singles with blank backs that have blue, black and red autographs. Apparently, Topps wanted to see which color looked the most realistic. By the way, the O-Pee-Chee deckle cards used black ink for autographs. Interestingly, the proof sheets contain nine images, only one of which was used in ‘69: Carl Yastrzemski. The rest of the players (Dave Adlesh, Hank Aguire, Sandy Alomar, Bob Johnson, Claude Osteen, Juan Pizzaro, Hal Woodeschick and Sonny Jackson–who is depicted on the Colt ‘45s) appear to have been randomly selected. Only Osteen could have reasonable been considered a star in 1968.”
For reference, here’s a proof sheet of 1969 Topps Deckle Edge cards, representing two complete 33-card sets, that REA sold in the spring of 2021 for $600.
