Select a different Sport or Vintage Baseball Cards set       or SEARCH for:     Enter words, partial words with wildcards (*) or phrases in quotes.   1959 Yankees     displays vintage 1959 Yankees cards.   Willie Mays     displays all Willie Mays cards, old and recent.

Always buying vintage sports cards! Escort them to San Diego.
Escorts to lowest baseball card supplies prices New York City.

Below are some tidbits on baseball and sportscard collecting. Visit our web site for more info on vintage and current baseball, football, basketball, hockey, sports and non-sport cards and card collecting.

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. 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.

1951 Bowman Baseball 1951 was Bowman's largest set to date, both in the card size and number of cards. Thanks to the several major rookies, led by Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, the 1951 Bowman set is by far Bowman's most valuable. Bowman again used hand-painted color reproductions of actual photographs. The 1951 Bowman card fronts were very similar to the 1950 set, with several players 1951 Bowman cards look like larger versions of their 1950 card. Cards #243-#324 are scarce high numbers. The rookie cards of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays are in this series making them very difficult to obtain. TOP ROOKIES: Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Whitey Ford, Monte Irvin, Nellie Fox, Joe Garagiola, Jackie Jensen, Jim Piersall ... TOP STARS: Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Duke Snider, Richie Ashburn & MORE !!!

1964 Topps Stand-Ups Topps 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 !!!

Web site services provided by   www.BadaBadaBing.com
CA: San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco;   Las Vegas, Miami, New York City, Washington DC escorts

© 1995-2010 "InterNet's Baseball Card Store" / Joseph Juhasz ... All Rights Reserved