Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
This 36-card uncut production sheet of 1950 Bowman football cards is a legitimate work of art. I definitely need to pick up an early Bowman-era sheet to display in the Hobby Library.
It consists of cards 109 through 124. Card 144 in the bottom right corner is missing a piece, and there is also a stain, mostly evident from the back, which affects four cards.
Lelands sold the following pair of 36-card uncut sheets in December 2001 for $1491; one is the same but without the missing piece.
The Spring 1982 issue of Baseball Cards has a great article by Bill Bossert called Uncut Sheets Tell the Untold Story. He shares this incredible proof sheet for Topps’ 1972 Candy Lids test issue in it.
Here’s what he wrote about the set and sheet:
I hope that sheet wasn’t cut up. However, I did find this 1972 Topps Candy Lid Test Proof Willie Mays card that was sold by SCP Auctions for $622 on January 29, 2008.
You can see that Topps printed the Mays card on previously used stock, and there are a few other proof’s out there.
The American Card Catalog is a foundational piece of the hobby. It was the first major attempt to categorize all known American card issues under a common numbering systems. So older American Card Catalogs are highly collectible, but this 1953 copy is special because both Jefferson Burdick and Charles Bray signed it.
Here are some later reprints from the hobby library (1960, 1967, and 1988).
Here’s a one-of-a-kind proof sheet of 12 three-card 1961 Bazooka panels. It was auctioned off in Ron Oser Enterprises’ April 2001 catalog.
Complete boxes are really rare, too. Robert Edward Auctions sold this PSA-graded 1961 Bazooka Box (tabs missing) #19/20/21 in February 2022 for $4800.
Here’s a card show history throwback to January 1982 when “New York’s Biggest And Best One Day Show” was held at JFK’s Travelodge International Hotel with guest star Bobby Richardson!
The pictured 1965 Topps #115 Bobby Richardson is an oft-graded card with PSA having slabbed over 450. However, there isn’t a single Gem Mint 10.
By the way, did you know Richardson is the only player to win the World Series MVP award for the losing team?
How’s this for a hobby niche—Topps Signed Checks! Here’s an official Topps Chewing Gum Inc.” copy dated May 19, 1961, made out to Henry L. Aaron!
The back has Aaron’s signature and a printed agreement between Topps and Aaron for the rights to use his image on the upcoming years’ baseball cards.
Here’s a photo from Rosen’s book True Mint of his $75k deal for hundreds of low number, black back, 1952 Topps baseball packs.
Rosen wrote that he was at a show in Seattle in 1991 when, right before the show, a man walked in with hundreds of packs of 1952 Topps baseball cards cellophane-wrapped in bricks of six. And since the seller had opened a few, there were also five Pafkos and a bunch of other low-number cards.
The seller told Rosen he got the cards at a garage sale for $50 and didn’t have more, but Rosen wrote that the seller sold several more to other dealers and consigned several low-number boxes in an auction.