Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
Despite its short run of only 16 issues, Topps Magazine produced a ton of amazing content, including this brief piece from Skip Rozin on New York heroes Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider.
I love that the magazine highlighted the three players’ 1952 Topps baseball cards.
Here’s an awesome advertisement, scanned from a June 2005 auction catalog for B.F. Goodrich P-F Canvas Shoes featuing a slew of MLB legends.
A few years later, in 2013, Lelands sold a framed copy of the awesome stadium-designed cardboard ad, mentioning that it measures 19” x 25”. They also highlighted the inclusion of Sam Jethroe as an early African American promotion—that copy sold for $640.
If you look around, you’ll find several variations dating later into the ’50s that include legends like Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays. However, if you want them in your collections, they’ll cost you many thousands of dollars. Luckily, they all feature floating heads!
In July, I shared the original artwork used for Whitey Ford’s 1953 Topps baseball card; today, the details for Willie Mays.
Again, the original full-color paintings of Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campanella’s 1953 Topps baseball cards were first made available to the hobby in Guernsey’s Topps Auction in 1989.
Here’s the section’s description in the catalog and the details for the 3 1/2″ x 5″ VG conditioned 1953 Willie Mays original color artwork. It sold for $80k (+10% Buyers Premium).
I’m curious if the owner of the original artwork has managed to pick up a copy of the original news photograph that inspired the piece. REA sold this circa 1951 PSA/DNA Type 1 example for $16,800 in the Spring of 2020.
And finally, here’s a fantastic example of the 1953 Topps #244 Willie Mays card.
Today, in hobby hoarding history, a visually stunning assortment of 661 1971 Milk Duds unassembled complete boxes.
REA offered this lot in July 2000 with a $1,000 reserve. Here’s the complete description:
In 1971 Milk Duds issued this unusual set on the back of five cent boxes of Milk Duds candy. This giant hoard of 661 complete boxes includes only 36 different cards. There are between ten and forty-eight of each of 11 players represented in the group. These are complete unassembled boxes which never made it to the candy store. 98% range from Ex-Mt to Nr/Mt-Mt (averaging Nr/Mt), 2% Vg to Vg-Ex/Ex. This is an incredible find of these candy cards in their most ideal complete box form. Assortment includes the following stars with the number in parenthesis indicating the quantity of that player: Aparicio (1). Brock (28), Clemente (34), Jenkins (44), Killebrew (4), Mays (41), McCovey (9), B. Robinson (19). F. Robinson (24), Rose (2), Williams (1). The Standard Catalog book value for this assortment is in excess of $11,000. Total 661 complete unassembled boxes.
While this hoard doesn’t include a complete set of full boxes, which command $3,000-5,000 these days, it did have 41 Mays and 34 Clemente boxes, which, in high grade, individually command >$1k each.
Mastro offered these four signed 1952 Topps monsters from the Mark Friedland Autographed Card Collection in their August 2006 catalog.
The complete collection was described to have been amassed in just a year and a half, as Mark acquired several prominent private holdings, like the McAllister Collection. Most of the collection’s 10k+ cards were authenticated by PSA/DNA, with the remainder by SGC and James Spence.
The next lot in the auction, 1103, was for 210 different signed 1952 Topps cards!
Check out this advertisement from Kit Young from the September 1991 issue of Baseball Cards magazine.
At the time, a complete case of 1989 Upper Deck High Number Factory Sets was $1,495, and a 1952 Topps Willie Mays card in Vg-Ex condition was $575.
For context, REA sold this PSA 4 graded 1952 Topps #261 Willie Mays card for $8700 in December 2023.
And those 1989 Upper Deck High Number Factory Set cases? Well, Steel City Collectibles sold one on eBay for $659 in January 2024.
I recently discovered that this 1961 Post Cereal baseball advertising display sign existed when I found it inside an auction catalog from April 2000.
The cardboard sign was described as being a 28” circular heavy cardboard sign with blow-up pictures of nine 1961 Post Cereal cards, including Willie Mays (autographed) Whitey Ford, Nelson Fox, Roy Face, Pete Runnels, Lew Burdette, Ken Boyer, Jim Gentile, and Jim Lemon.
The auction presumed that some printed advertising in the center was probably missing.
It appears that Collect Auctions re-sold the same sign in November 2018 for $1160. They included this close-up of the Mays card (with a Beckett Authentication Service endorsement).
