Finding Woody Gelman’s personal collection of card samples would be a treasure for hobby enthusiasts today. However, this auction of over 160 sports and non-sports samples, including a 1969 color Deckle Edge prototype of Sandy Koufax, was from April 2000 and likely broken up.
The image in the catalog was really small, so the scan isn’t super clear, but the Koufax is a scaled copy of the 1964 Topps Giants Koufax card.
The Topps Archives has a great post about Gelman’s filing system, including better scans of the Koufax and King Kong pages. He said these albums have been “looted and pillaged over the years with all the pages and files being scattered across the hobby landscape with reckless abandon, stymying any hope of getting a complete picture painted.”
I did find one related item on eBay with an asking price of $175: Gleman’s IDEA page for the Topps “Magic Photo”Hidden Pictures” Hocus Focus set. Unfortunately, the seller said the cards were removed 15 years ago.
I shared Topps Magazine’s tribute to Willie, Mickey & The Duke in early October. Well, the ‘Topps Remembers’ series continued, and in their final issue (Fall 1993, No. 16), Topps featured a fantastic piece on the legendary multi-sport champion Jim Thorpe!
Given the article, I thought sharing some of his most significant cards made sense. Note that PSA does have a Master set for Thorpe that currently requires 112 cards, though no one currently even has 10% of them.
Today, his two most well-known cards are probably his 1955 Topps All-American card (I highlighted the original wire photo in April 2024) and the 1933 Goudey Sport Kings card.
In the spring of 2016, REA sold this 1955 Topps All-American PSA 9 copy for $5,100.
Heritage sold this PSA 8 1933 Goudey Sport Kings Thorpe card for $7,767 in May 2015.
However, he has a few cards that are much tougher to track down, like this 1916 Famous & Barr card (there are a handful of variations of this card) that Heritage sold for $4,182 in November 2010.
Thorpe also has a Zeenut PCL card; REA sold this one in the spring of 2022 for $39,600.
And if you’re looking for a cheaper Thorpe, I recommend the card he shares with Teddy Ballgame.
A single ad in The Trader Speaks can be a window into a whole new world of vintage cards—like the 1974 Broder Pacific Coast League Popcorn set!
That’s Maury Wills, then of the Seattle Rainiers, pictured in the ad, card #1 in the set.
Today, a “Broder” is often referred to as any unlicensed set, but the Broder’s were actually a father/son duo who made a bunch of unlicensed cards starting in the ’70s through the ’90s.
The 2” x 3” black-and-white 1974 P.C.L. Baseball “Popcorn” Cards set is based on the cards that Seattle Rainiers put in popcorn boxes starting in the mid ’50s. The 1974 set was printed on really thin cardstock, and in sheets that were crudly cut, since you’ll see remnants of other cards on the edges of the cards pretty often. The back’s are pretty minimalistic, too. PSA has only graded a handful, but this Steve Watson was listed on eBay in November 2024 for $28.88.
Beckett says the set has more than 200 cards, and that they were issued over two series that were available for $5.75 each. The advertisement above shows two 55 card series for $4.25, but it’s likely the Trader Speaks ad was for an early release (so maybe the set extended into 1975 since the ad was placed in a December 1974 issue) since TCDB lists 235 cards in its checklist and there are complete sets available on eBay for $450 (with a Best Offer option) advertised as also having 235 cards.
For more about the Broder family, the PCL, and these cards, check out this blog post from Wrigley Roster Jenga and this one from SABR.
I know 1991 Fleer is the more click-baity set, but how many of you sent in for one of these 1992 Fleer “limited-edition” Rookie Sensations promotional sheets?
I joke about them being “limited” because they’re numbered out of 250k!
I scanned the following advertisement for the sheets from the June 1992 issue of Allan Kaye’s Sports Cards News & Price Guides, which tells us getting one required ten 1992 Fleer Baseball wrappers plus a dollar for shipping and handling.
They showed up to your house in a solid manilla envelope along with the following letter from Fleer.
Back in the 1950s, collecting baseball cards was all the rage with kids, and companies saw this as a perfect opportunity to promote their products, including the Red Heart Dog Food Co. They released a series of 33 stunning post-war baseball cards in 1954 featuring some of the biggest names in the game, spread across three sets with blue, green, and red backgrounds. To get your hands on each group of these coveted cards, you only had to send in two Red Heart labels, 10 cents, and a coupon for each item to Red Heart Baseball Pictures in Chicago, Illinois.
1954 Red Heart Dog Food Label Featuring Baseball Player Pictures Offer
Red Heart’s baseball card offer was heavily advertised in Sunday newspaper comic sections in 1954. Some collectors even claimed to have received cards from the company as late as the early 1970s, although the coupons showed an expiration date of January 1st, 1955.
Red Heart used at least four different advertisements to promote its mail-in offer for baseball cards. We don’t have any documentation on how to label them, so I’ll refer to them as Ad Format 1, 2, 3, and 4.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 1
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 1
All four ads had essentially the same information, just formatted into different sizes and locations on the page. This format was unique because it also shared Red Heart’s offers for baseball caps, t-shirts, autographed baseballs, pennants, identification bracelets, charm bracelets, and cards.
Huggins and Scott auctioned off a Red Heart Order Sheet, offering a head scarf and pen and pencil set as well. It sold for $190 in December 2012.
1954 Red Heart Order Sheet – Side 1
1954 Red Heart Order Sheet – Side 2
The following comic page, which features the ad, is from the Washington D.C. Evening Star, June 20th, 1954.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 1 On Comic Page
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 2
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 2
Ad format two is cool because it lists all the players from each series. Maybe this is why the red-backed cards are a little scarcer today. You can see that the same information is organized differently in the space. I’ve found a pair of these formats that probably had different colorings based on the newspaper printer.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 2
This full comic page featuring the ad is from the Washington D.C. Evening Star from April 18th, 1954, the earliest ad I found for the set.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 2 On Comic Page
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 3
Ad format three also organized the same information a little differently. However, the images on the cards are a little more cartoony compared to format 2. Also, you’ve got to give Red Heart credit for securing rights to Stan Musial; Topps and Bowman couldn’t. The color ad is from a May 1954 San Francisco Chronicle.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 3
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 4
Kudos to the collector who made a fantastic display with this ad and a quartet of cards.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 4
The two full-page comic ads are also from the Washington Evening Star; both were published in May.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 4 On Comic Page
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 4 On Comic Page
Another item Red Heart used to drum up sales of its Dog Food via the Baseball Player Pictures was an advertising poster. This one features Stan Musial, Al Rosen, Hank Sauer, and Mickey Mantle and includes an original order blank taped to the front. Leland’s sold it for $477 in December 2013.
1954 Red Heart Dog Food Baseball Card Advertising Poster
To sum up, the ads that Red Heart used to promote their 1954 baseball cards (and dog food) were eye-catching and likely successful, as evidenced by the almost 12000 PSA-graded cards that exist today. The company’s marketing team showed creativity and innovation by using different ad formats in Sunday newspaper comics. If you happen to have a 1954 Red Heart Baseball set, adding a newspaper ad to your collection would be a great way to complete it! And it’s worth noting that Red Heart Dog Food Co. still exists today under Smithfield Foods, Inc.
Sports Cards Magazine & Price Guide had a great feature in the mid-’90s, providing “a wrapup of some of the country’s largest sports auctions.” This one from September 1996 was chockful of incredible items.
Larson highlighted the John F. Kennedy signed ball as the highlight of Mastro’s auction that topped $850,000 in sales. But I wanted to compare two of the cards to today’s prices. The PSA 8 graded 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle sold for $24,394; today, that’s probably a $1M card. And the PSA 8 1914 Crack Jack Joe Jackson, well, Heritage sold one nine years ago for $101k.
As for the rest of the article, half of that stuff won’t show up for sale again, but if any of it does, you can bet on it being a lot pricier!
In the summer of 1965, Shea Stadium was buzzing with excitement as nearly 40k fans gathered to celebrate baseball legend Casey Stengel’s 75th birthday. Dugan Brothers, a New York area bakery, even created a baseball card to commemorate the event. Unfortunately, Stengel wasn’t there; he found himself grappling with a broken hip that morning that ended his managerial career.
The Society For American Baseball Research wrote an excellent piece explaining Stengel’s unexpected goodbye, but here’s the 101. On July 24, 1965, 36,921 fans visited Shea Stadium for a doubleheader that also included a two-inning Old-Timers Day game between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. But the second game of the doubleheader would become historic as Stengel’s last, a 5-1 Mets loss to the Phillies.
After the loss, Stengel joined a few friends who were back in town, some for the old-timers’ celebration, at Toots Shor’s restaurant. After the early morning departure, Stengel went to the home of Mets comptroller Joe DiGregorio, where, ten years later, we learned he had fallen in the bathroom and broke his hip. He went to the hospital the morning of July 25, where he remained for almost a month, after which he confirmed his retirement, which the Mets made publicly official on August 30.
Now, back to the planned July 25 event. Stengel’s birthday was July 30, but the 25th was probably chosen since the Mets were about to go on the road for games against Chicago and Philadelphia from July 28 through August 1. The planned party included a cake from Dugan Brothers, a New York Area bakery known for their drivers (The Dugan Man) who would deliver items to your home until they went out of business in 1967.
Dugan Bros. Truck
The company also made a one-off card to celebrate Stengel. It’s one of the tougher-to-find 1960s cards.
1965 Dugan Bros. Casey Stengel – Front
1965 Dugan Bros. Casey Stengel – Reverse
The 2-1/2″ x 3-1/2″ card was given to each fan in attendance. The front features Stengel in a Mets uniform, while the back has basic biographical information.
PSA has graded a few examples, a PSA 2 and a PSA 3, along with one PSA/DNA copy. SGC has a single 1965 Dugan Bros. Stengel in their pop report, a 5.5. Pricing varies; a slabbed signed copy from Beckett sold on eBay in November 2024 for $659.99; the PSA 2 pictured above has also been on eBay for a while with a $249.99 (or Best Offer) price; it was recently discounted to $199.99. Brockelman Auctions sold the following raw example for $222.75 in February 2021, but you can probably pick up a raw copy for between $50-100 with a bit of patience.
1965 Dugan Bros. Casey Stengel
Now, to finish the story. The Mets still said farewell to Stengel at Shea Stadium on September 2, 1965. Here’s an original 7.5″ x 10″ photo of the event showing Stengel walking across the field with a cane.
Casey Stengel Says Farewell To Shea Stadium
The Mets finished the 1965 season with a dismal 50-112 record, but the Mets retired Stengel’s #37 before the season was over, and the Yankees followed suit, making Stengel the first person to have his number retired by both teams!
