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1988-89 Fleer Basketball #115 John Stockton ROOKIEPrice = $ 24.95NM/MT
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Below are some tidbits on baseball and sportscard collecting.
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(part 1) Baseball card production was virtually halted in the early 1940's due to paper shortages created by World War II. The "Modern Era" of baseball cards began in 1948 when Bowman Gum Inc. offered one card and one piece of gum in a pack for a penny. The first important football set was the Mayo set featuring college players in 1984. Other than the 1935 National Chicle set no other key football set was issued until 1948 when noth Bowman and Leaf produced sets.
The Major Card Grading Companies (T6)
There is almost universal agreement that the top 5 grading card companies are: 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 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.
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1961 Topps Baseball Cards AUTOGRAPHED Set info/informationThe 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 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.
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1964 Topps Stand-UpsTopps most popular 1960's test issue !!!Blank-backed and unnumbered, these standard size cards were called "Stand-Ups". "Stand-Ups" refers to a type of card that was die cut around the player's picture. The background section then could be folded in half, so the card could stand up by itself while the player's picture stood alone. Directions for folding are on the background and when folded only the green background remains. 1934-36 Batter Up and the 1951 Topps All-Star sets are 2 other popular standup issues. Thanks to the green and yellow borders and the likelihood that most cards have been heavily folded, 1964 Stand-Ups are extremely difficult to obtain in top grades. The 77 card set features color photographs of the player on yellow and green backgrounds. 22 of the 77 cards were single printed making them twice as scarce and much higher in demand. The set is packed with Hall-of-Famers including MICKEY MANTLE, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Carl Yastrzemski, Al Kaline, Brooks Robinson, Don Drysdale, Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey and more !!! |
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