Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
It’s incredible that this 1949 Bowman window ad sheet, meant to be stuck inside a window with pre-applied glue, survived intact.
In their May 2000 catalog, Mastro auctions described this 20” x 5-3/4” piece as in near-mint condition with a fold in the center, as manufactured. It features 16 of the set’s 240 “upcoming” cards.
One contributor on the net54 boards said these were displayed in candy store windows in the Philadelphia area in June 1949.
Here’s the original baseball card reverse artwork for Jerry Koosman’s 1970 Topps The Sporting News All-Star card #468.
It was described in Ron Oser Enterprises’ December 2000 catalog as an approximately 5” x 7” pen-and-ink artwork.
Here’s an example of a final production card (via PWCC).
Bill Heitman wrote this light-hearted review of the Second National Sports Collectors Convention, held at the Plymouth Hilton in Michigan in 1981. It appeared in the September 1981 issue of Trader Speaks.
A couple of notes: I hadn’t realized the second National was a conversion of an already successful show. Second, it’s cool how tight-nit many “hobby influencers” seemed to be in 1981. Next, I wish today’s National conventions had more seminars like this one. It tracks that Mr. Tiger, Al Kaline, would be a popular signer at a Michigan card show. Bill’s closing quote is PERFECT, “If the spirit of the National Convention survives, we will all still have fun in this hobby.”
PS: The magazine was too big for my scanner, so I did my best to “glue” two scans of separate pages together; this was the “centerfold.”
While you can find all of the information from The Illustrated Wrapper Checklist on TCDB or online auction house archives, Christopher Benjamin’s project was significant in 1980.
If that name sounds familiar, that’s because Benjamin was a prominent hobby writer, particularly for non-sports cards. The following ad was in Alan Kaye’s Sports Cards News & Price Guides premier issue and included the following bio, “Christopher Benjamin has published The Card Collectors Bulletin, the “original” hobby magazine. He is editor-in-chief of Non-Sports Update and has authored more than a dozen books and monographs about cards and collecting.”
The guide started with a few words to the collector, thanking them for their purchase, explaining the project, and thanking folks for their contributions.
Then, there were sequential photos of significant baseball, football, basketball, hockey (they’ve always been tough to track down), and non-sports wrappers.
I particularly like that Benjamin included a few boxes and tins on the inside back cover.
If you’re a fan of hobby publications, The Illustrated Wrapper Checklist is a must-get, just are back issues of The Wrapper which was advertised on the back cover.
In 1991, Topps Magazine ran a feature called Four Decades of Greatness, featuring four players in each issue, one from each of the previous four decades, who were great players and a large part of Topps baseball cards.
Here’s a list of who they included for each decade:
When I first shared these on X, one collector wrote, “Well the thing that jumps out most immediately is including Musial in the 50s, when Topps made like two cards of him in that decade. And The Man appeared on Bowman, Red Man, Red Heart, Berk Ross, and others in that time, so it’s not like he was exclusive.”
What do you think? Biggest snub? Oddest inclusion?
Did you know Mickey Mantle sponsored an indoor-outdoor cornhole-like throwing game in the 1950’s? I ran across this example in Ron Oser Enterprises April 2001 auction catalog.
They described it as a very large & colorful 22” x 34” heavy cardboard game with a striking 30” tall image of Mantle in a batting pose. They wrote that the board contained four 6-inch holes into which balls (or beanbags) were thrown to score singles, doubles, triples, or home runs. The center “Home Run 1000” hole still had the original red oil-cloth sack backing that would “catch” the ball. They gave the item an overall VgEx condition grade.
With all four bags in place, Heritage sold the following example for $2040 in May 2019; other auction houses have sold signed copies for north of $4k.
The instructions on the back show that Garnder & Co., in Chicago, Illinois, manufactured the game.
Have you been to any great card shows lately? I’ll bet the Sports Memorabilia Show #4 in Whippany, New Jersey, was a good one!
This ad comes from the July 1982 issue of Trader Speaks and highlights Whitey Ford’s attendance during Sunday’s show, where he had agreed to sign 1000 autographs on a first-come, first-served basis.
Given that the ad features Ford’s 1951 Bowman baseball card, I thought it would be fun to take a look at a few sales of them:
REA has sold a handful, including the following PSA VG 3 Auto 10 copy with an HOF ’74 inscription for $780 in 2018, a PSA authentic copy for $510 in 2021, and a fairly beat-up card with an authentic signature for $450 in 2022.
Interestingly, REA re-sold the PSA VG 3 Auto 10 copy in 2023 for $3600, quite an increase! That’s probably because Ford died in 2020.
Now, some cards change hands quite often, so guess what? Probstein sold the same PSA VG 3 Auto 10 Ford on eBay on May 29, 2024, for $2200.
What’s more, the beat-up version above with cert 17605781 is also on eBay, with an asking price of $1699. There’s another PSA authentic copy on eBay as well, with an asking price of $1299.99 (cert 43601626). Given these prices, someone possibly got quite a steal when they picked up this blue-label version in April 2024 for $500.
