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Q1: How long have sports cards been around ? (part 1) The first baseball trading cards date back to 1869. For many years, baseball cards were packaged in packs of tobacco as a way to increase sales the same way that today prizes are packaged in boxes of cereal. In the 1920's and 1930's, candy and gum companies started packaging baseball cards in their products as well. 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. History Of O-Pee-Chee (T5) O-Pee-Chee, also known as OPC, is the Canadian equivalent of Topps. The history of this gum & sports card company is actually quite different. OPC is based in London, Ontario Canada and pre-dates Topps by many years. OPC’s first sports card set was back in 1933 when they produced the V304 hockey cards. The set included stars Eddie Shore and Howie Morenz and has a book value of around $15,000. Their first baseball set was released in 1937. It was a cross between the 1934 Goudeys and Batter-Ups and featured only American League players. The top player in the set is Joe Dimaggio. OPC started their long run of complete baseball card sets in 1965. In these early years, the OPC sets were much smaller than Topps and usually included only the first couple of series. Although they were printed on a slightly different card stock the cards front and backs were nearly identical to Topps but with a small "Printed in Canada" on the back. Baseball was much less popular in Canada and it is estimated that OPC cards from these early years were produced in a ratio of between 1% and 5% of Topps cards making them exceedingly scarce !!! Starting in 1970, OPC baseball cards became more interesting. Canadian legislation demanded that all items produced in Canada carry both French & English so O-Pee-Chee baseball cards became bilingual with their card backs printed in both languages. In 1971, the OPC baseball set had a much more interesting back design and also offered 14 different card photos not in the Topps set of that year. 1972 OPC included a card of Gil Hodges mentioning his death that was not a part of the Topps set. 1974 OPC did include any of the "Washington Nationals/San Diego Padres" variations. In 1977 although the card format remained the same, about 1/3 of the OPC set had different poses/images than their Topps counterparts. In the late ‘70’s, the OPC card fronts appeared similar to Topps but sometimes included traded information with a line across them saying "Now with XXXX". These differences were due the the OPC cards being printed much later into the season allowing for an update of the players status. OPC also was busy with their hockey and Canadian Football League issues. In 1968 they re- entered the hockey market. Today OPC is still strong in the baseball card and hockey card market and has also started printing non-sports cards.

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 !

1963 Topps Stickers Another of the interesting Topps Issues of the 1960's ! Topps inserted these Stick-Ons (stickers) in several of series of their 1963 Topps baseball cards. Interestingly, the Stick-On inserts were not mentioned or advertised on wax pack wrappers in 1963. The complete 1963 Topps Stick-Ons set is packed with HALL-OF-FAMERS and contains 46 stickers measuring 1-1/4" x 2-3/4". The Stick-Ons come in 2 distinct variations. They can be found either with blank-backs or the scarcer variation with instructions printed on the back. The Stick-Ons have with an approx. 3/16" "white" band running left to right across the mug shot. This band appears to be lighter than the printing above and below it. Theory is that it is an aging effect caused by the backing strip. TOP STARS: Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Stan Musial, Al Kaline, Carl Yastrzemski, Ernie Banks and tons MORE !!!

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