Whitey Ford

A Great New Gift Idea! The Topps 1964 Baseball Gift Box

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My favorite thing about the hobby is interacting with other collectors and hobby historians and learning about new items. Well, on the morning of May 1st, 2023, a collector contacted me via e-mail after perusing the site with two photos of an empty box of cards I’d never seen before.

1964 Topps Baseball Gift Box
1964 Topps Baseball Gift Box Lid

He thought maybe they were issued around Christmas time in 1964 to sell leftover cards after the season had ended and asked if I knew anything about it. I searched some of my older books and came up empty-handed. He mentioned the box didn’t have any code on it, so I asked if he’d be ok with my sharing it on Facebook to see if anyone else could help.

On Facebook, a collector mentioned he had seen a reference to the box before and shared the following sell sheet.

1964 Topps Baseball Gift Box Sell Sheet

One collector on Facebook commented that the box on the sell sheet looks a lot like a carton of cigarettes! And another was pretty sure Topps only made this product in 64.

The box wasn’t really meant for Christmas; it’s a gift box for any occasion, “what better way to say ‘happy birthday’ or just ‘hello.’ The boxes came 24 per case for $14.40 or 60 cents a box. Each box had 20 5-cent packs (100 total cards), though given the gift theme, I don’t think they were meant to be sold by the pack. 

A ton of collectors reached out to me asking if the owner was interested in selling the empty box, but he’s not. Given how much interest it garnered in such a short period, I presume bidding would be intense.

I’m unsure how you’d price such an item, though. However, one collector shared that there was one on eBay many years ago, and he thought it was for $500, or maybe $338, but acknowledged it would go for much more these days. Another collector thinks he saw one around 2004.

The owner later shared three more photos of the box with me.

1964 Topps Baseball Gift Box – Angle 1
1964 Topps Baseball Gift Box – Angle 2
1964 Topps Baseball Gift Box – Angle 3

An interesting thing about the box is that that’s not Whitey Ford’s 1964 Topps baseball card printed on it; it looks like a 1964 design, but with his 1963 Topps photo. 

1964 and 1963 Topps Whitey Ford Cards

Some collectors surmised it could have come out as early as December 1963, given the difference in Ford’s card design. And maybe the low item number of 400 (on the sell sheet) indicates an early release, along with the image of the smiling kid being the same as the one on the 1962 Topps Baseball Bucks dealer sell sheet?

1962 Topps Baseball Bucks Sell Sheet

Funny enough, Topps did something similar with the 1964 Topps Giants set; the picture of Whitey Ford on the box isn’t identical to his card.

1964 Topps Giants Box and Whitey Ford Card

If you have more insight into this unique Topps product, please leave a comment or e-mail me.

1953 Topps #207 Whitey Ford Original Artwork

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I ran across the original color artwork used for Whitey Ford’s 1953 Topps baseball card while flipping through Sotheby’s February 1992 Important Baseball Cards and Sports Memorabilia Catalog. It represented a quick flip from its sale in Guernsey’s 1989 Topps Auction.

First, Sotheby’s included few details, just that it was a full-color original artwork and that the lot included an example card in near-mint to mint condition. They described the original artwork as being 3 1/2 by 5 in.

But like I said, Sotheby’s wasn’t the first auction house to offer this Topps original artwork. It was first made available to the hobby in Guernsey’s Topps Auction in 1989, along with the original full-color paintings of Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campanella’s 1953 Topps baseball cards.

Guernseys included cropped color photos of all six art pieces in the front (page 17) of the catalog; here’s a scan of the Ford.

The specific auction lots were found later in the catalog. Ford shared page 72 with Jackie Robinson. Notice the expected $2,000-3000 price.

The Ford did a little better than that; it sold for $35,200. Interestingly, less than three years later, Sotheby’s expected the Ford to be sold for only $20,000-25,000.

To round things out, here’s the original news photograph from the early 1950s that inspired Ford’s 1953 (and 1954) Topps baseball card. Heritage sold this PSA/DNA Type 1 example for $1,920 in November 2017.

Whitey Ford, A 1982 Card Show, And His 1951 Bowman Baseball Card

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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.