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1994 Sportflics FanFest All-Stars #AS5 Mike Piazza/Ivan Rodriguez

Price = $ 14.95
NM/MINT



1994 Sportflics FanFest All-Stars #AS5 Mike Piazza/Ivan Rodriguez Baseball cards
         

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Baseball
Q7: What are some additional useful to know baseball card collecting terms ?

(part 3)
High Numbers - vintage cards were issued in the ‘50s-‘70s in a series. During the baseball season, the largest number of cards were made. As the schedule progressed into September, when there would be less interest in baseball cards , Topps for one, specifically decreased production and hence much less product was available. As a result, a scarcity-factor was created and a premium holds for these first type of "short-printed" cards.

Inserts - special randomly-inserted cards which are not part of the regular set. Many modern inserts are sequentially-numbered and rarer than the card sets into which they are inserted.

O-Pee-Chee / OPC - a subsidiary of Topps, this card issue was produced specifically for distribution in Canada.

Promotional Card - generally referred to as cards issued to show what the product will look like on release and intended to help spur future sales. Often called a "promo" card.

Reprint - cards issued to reproduce the originals. With the current trend of vintage reprints, the new versions have a distinguishing characteristic evidenced by numbering.

Restored - a card or piece of memorabilia which someone has tried to return to a "like-new" condition. A restored card is considered to be of very little value.

Rookie Card - any league-licensed, widely distributed card to feature a player in his first year of trading cards.

Series - a group of cards within an issue deliberately split up by the manufacturer to distribute at different times of the year. (i.e.- vintage 1st series cards 1-100 were released in April and 2nd series cards 101-200 were released in July, etc.).

Short Print (SP) - a card printed to a lesser quantity than other cards in a set. Many recent short prints are also individually & serially-numbered.

Baseball

The Major Card Grading Companies (T6)

There is almost universal agreement that the top 5 grading card companies are:
    * PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator)
    * SGC (Sportscard Guaranty Authority)
    * BGS (Beckett Grading Service)
    * SCD (SCD Authentic)
    * GAI (Global Authentication)

PSA is Without a doubt is the top vintage and old cards grading company. The vintage card public has accepted PSA and people pay huge premiums for vintage cards with high PSA grades.

A few years ago, Beckett got into card-grading. They have been successful because they publish the hobbies top magazine and their name carries a lot of weight in the hobby. Also their BGS grading is perceived as being tougher than PSA. Unfortunately Beckett has complicated things further by actually having 3 different grading brands. BGS, BVG and BCCG. BGS is the original and considered a grade very strictly while BVG, basically designed to grade vintage cards, seems to grade a bit easier. BCCG seems to have been created for the Shopping Channel and seems to give their top grades to just about any nice recent card. These differences in grading standards are reflected in their resale prices.

Off-brand grading companies There's many lesser known grading companies with more of them appearing seemingly every single day. Some are actual companies while others may be just a single individual with some fairly inexpensive equipment. A list of some of the ones we've heard of is below.

It is possible that some of them do grade accurately but the market has little respect for these off-brand grading companies and their cards, if they can be sold, are usually sold at huge discounts off similarly rated cards by the top tier grading companies. This is especially true on high grade vintage cards orGEM MINT and MINT recent cards.

If you want to buy graded cards by these companies, be very careful to not pay too much. DO NOT compare their price with graded cards from the top tier companies. In most cases, the going prices aren't even close. If a PSA-9 sells for $40, and a PSA-10 sells for $300, it is more likely that a 10 from an off-brand grading company sells for much closer to the $40 than to the $300. If you don't understand that the discount is this deep, and you spend $100 on this thing, you may think you got a great deal when in fact you paid double or triple or more of the cards true value. For example, we once sold a PRO-10 Shaq rookie for $30 when the PSA-10 of that Shaq rookie was valued at $300.

If you see a great bargain on a vintage card then be especially careful. If a '51 Bowman Mantle is in a PRO-8 slab, you must ask yourself why is it not in a PSA slab? In PSA-8 that card would sell for more than a new Mercedes and any right minded seller would try to get the card into a PSA slab if it was possible. That they didn't do it has to be a clue that it wasn't possible. Why wouldn't it be possible? There are many reasons but the most obvious are that the card may be altered or there could be a very light crease.

As far as I know, these off-brand grading services do not offer grading guarantees. If you buy an off-brand graded vintage card and it turns out to be trimmed or altered or has light creases your only recourse will likely be with seller and often their answer will be that since the card was "professionally" gradedm the card is sold as is.

"Off-Brand" grading card companies
    AGS (Advanced Grading Specialists)
    ASA (Accugrade)
    CGS (Champs Grading Service)
    CEX (Certified Express)
    CSA (Certified Sports Authentication)
    CTA (CTA Grading Experts)
    FGA (Foremost Grading Authority)
    KSA (KSA Sports Card Authenticator)
    MINT (Mint Grading Service)
    PRO (PRO Sports Grading)
    PGS (Professional Grading Services)
    USA (Ultimate Sports Authority)
    WCG (World Class Grading)

Although some of the above may be "okay", we certainly don't recommend any of them. The market certainly doesn't treat them the same as the top-tier grading companies and in many cases their graded cards sell for the same or even less than an ungraded card. There are more off-brand grading "companies" entering the market. Some don't even use slabs, they simply put the cards in a screwdown or topload with a few drops of glue or a sticker. We've even seen "grading companies" that turn out to be just an individual seller grading and selling his own cards.

Baseball

1961 Topps Baseball Cards AUTOGRAPHED Set info/information

The 1961 Topps baseball card set included 587 standard size 2½" x 3½" cards (#1-#598 with several skipped numbers). 2 cards were accidently numbered #463, one of them (the Braves Team card was supposed to be card #426).
The 1961 Topps set included the following special "subsets":
* League Leaders (10 cards)
* World Series highlights (10 cards)
* Highlights (11 cards)
* MVP's (16 cards)
* Checklists (7 cards plus several variations)
* Team cards (xx cards)
* Special Multi-Player cards (xx cards)
* Managers (xx cards)
* Topps Rookie All-Star Trophies (xx cards)
* Sporting News All-Stars (#566-#589)

1961 Topps was the first of the very popular and continuing Topps Rookie All-Star Trophies subsets. Cards from the last series (#523-#589) are scarce "High Numbers" making the set fairly expensive to complete.

MLB Baseball expansion led to one of the least attractive aspects of the 1961 Topps baseball card set. The American League made several changes. The Los Angeles Angels were added, the Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins and a new franchise was granted to the Washington Senators who also debuted in 1961. Possibly because of these team changes, many players had their portrait photos taken without their baseball caps. Not only did most of the players look awful without their caps, they looked more like your old, not so handsome uncle then athletes!

Card backs were black print on an army green background on a dark card stock making them somewhat difficult to read. TOP ROOKIES: #35 Ron Santo, #141 Billy Williams, #417 Juan Marichal, Willie Davis, Zoilo Versalles & Jim Maloney; are popular players but still reasonably priced.

More interesting tid-bits from the 1961 Topps set:

Card #1 features All-American basketball player Dick Groat
Card #2 features Roger Maris, right prior to his record breaking 61 Home Run season
........Maris once ran back four kickoffs for touchdowns in a single game!
Mickey Mantle had 6 cards making the 1961 Topps set that much more costly.
  #.44 American League Home Run Leaders
  #300 Mickey Mantle's regular card
  #307 Mickey Mantle 'Slams 2 Home Runs' World Series
  #406 Mickey Mantle "Blasts 565 ft. HR"
  #475 Mickey Mantle MVP card
  #578 Mickey Mantle's scarce high # All-Star card
Other than the checklists, the set has no other variations.

Collectors of 1961 Topps cards may also want to take a look at 3 other baseball issues Topps released that year: a Topps Dice Game, Topps Magic Rub-Offs and a series of Topps Stamps.

Although some dealers and collectors consider this set boring, with it's clean design, many special subsets and multiple cards of some of the games top stars including 6 Mantle's I rate it much higher.
And, as I end most of my write-ups on vintage Topps sets, grab a glance at Don Mossi and those famous ears !


Baseball

1963 Fleer Baseball

In an attempt by Fleer to circumvent Topps exclusive rights to baseball cards, Fleer issued their 1963 baseball cards with cookies instead of gum. The 1963 Fleer baseball card issue was intended to be a much larger set issued in multiple series but Topps sued Fleer after their first series was released. Due to Topps deep pockets Fleer soon pulled the set from the market and cancelled their plans for the remaining series leaving this very, very popular set at just 66 cards plus one unnumbered checklist.

But what a 66 cards !!! The 1963 Fleer Cards are attractive and feature an extremely high percentage of stars. Some of the top stars in the 1963 Fleer baseball card set are Brooks Robinson, Willie Mays, Carl Yastrzemski, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Don Drysdale and Warren Spahn.. The set also included 2 very scare Short Prints, Joe Adcock and an unnumbered checklist.

The most interesting card in this set is the Maury Wills Rookie card. Even though Wills started his major league career with the Dodgers way back in 1959 quickly becoming a superstar, his 1963 Fleer card is considered his rookie card ! How is this possible ? Well, back in 1959, 1960 and 1961, Topps did not consider Wills worthy enough to have a baseball card. Needless to say, Wills was very upset at this slight from Topps. After Wills won the 1962 N.L. MVP award, Topps quickly came a courting but Wills answered with a large "NO". From 1961 thru 1966, Wills prevented Topps from making any of his baseball cards. Wills and Topps finally made up making his 1967 Topps high number short print his first Topps card and also his most expensive card. Adding interest to the Wills baseball card story, Post Cereal released a Maury Wills card in their 1962 set making that the earliest Maury Wills rookie card. Wills was also pictured on a special 1960 Topps card featuring the 1959 World Series. The card features Luis Aparicio stealing 2nd base with Wills pictured trying to make the tag.


Baseball

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