Below are short bits & pieces on sportscard & baseball trading card collecting.
Please wander around the website for more info, prices, values & images
on vintage baseball, football, basketball, hockey, sport and non-sports cards.
1938 Horrors of War - Gum Inc.
One of the most famous card sets of all time,
it began as a 240-card set featuring the Chinese-Japanese War,
the Spanish Civil War and the Ethiopian War. 48 cards were later
added on Germany and the buildup to World War II.
Cards #25-192 appear to be slightly more common than the others
cards in the series. Cards 241-288 are similar to more recent
high numbers in that each pack held one card from the high series
and one card from the low series.
The set is extremely popular and card "values" have increased
ten-fold since the early 1990s. Cards #1, #240, #277, #283, #286 & #288 are particularly valuable,
especially in prime condition.
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Auction's most costly vintage baseball cards
The history of vintage baseball card auctions is long and colorful.
T-206 Honus Wagner tobacco cards have sold for upto $2.8 million in
auction. The "Holy Grail of Sports Cards", it's extreme-high auction
value can mostly be attributed to great PR and "auction fever".
It's not close to being the rarest baseball card and Honus Wagner is not
Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle. Yes, the T-206 set is beautiful & special but
because of the # of cards and scarcities, few collector's try to complete,
which should keep auction competition down compared to say 1933 Goudey
or 1952 Topps baseball card issues.
BUT IT DOES NOT...
There's a story Wagner banned his card because he was anti-tobacco
but there are other stories about financial considerations.
You surely have heard of PSA and may even know that this card was the
FIRST they ever graded. But did you know that dealer (B.l. .ast.o name
encoded) admitted tampering with the card, perhaps having it trimmed
down to size, before PSA graded it so highly for the auction.
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1991 Topps Desert Shield cards
Checklist & Values
The 792 card 1991 Topps Desert Shield Baseball card set was issued by
Topps for the soldiers serving in the Gulf War. The Desert Shield set is
a variation of Topps regular 1991 baseball card with each card having a
special gold-foiled 'Desert Shield' stamp added to the front.
Many of the cards, scooped up by military personnel stateside, never made
it overseas. The equivalent of approx 6,500 sets of cards were made.
Cards are still sought after and fairly scarce with complete sets
nearly impossible to find. Be aware of counterfeits. Fakes can easily be
determined by comparing the gold foil logo with a real Desert Shield card.
The Chipper Jones rookie is the key card in the set along with the usual
super stars like Nolan Ryan, Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken ...
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History Of O-Pee-Chee
O-Pee-Chee (OPC) based in Ontario Canada, is mostly thought of as the
Canadian version of Topps but it actually pre-dates Topps by many years.
In 1933, OPC issued their first sports card set, the V304 Hockey cards and
is currently in the tens of thousands. Their first baseball set was
issued in 1937. It was similar to the 1934 Goudeys and Batter-Ups
and the top player was Joe Dimaggio.
O-Pee-Chee created baseball card sets similar to TOpps from 1965 into the
1990's. At first OPC sets were much smaller than Topps
and included just the first few series. Fronts & backs were nearly identical
but with a small "Printed in Canada" on the back and the card stock was
slightly different.
Baseball being much less popular in Canada, OPC print runs of their early
years were between 1% and 10% of Topps making them exceedingly scarce !!!
Starting in 1970, Canadian legislation demanded all items produced in Canada
carry both French & English so OPC baseball cards became bilingual with both
languages included.
Other OPC differences include:
1971, OPC even changed the back design to a much more
interesting back and also offered 14 different card photos not in the Topps set.
1972 OPC included a card of Gil Hodges mentioning his death that was
not a part of the Topps set.
1974 OPC did not include any "Washington Nationals" variations.
1977 the card format remained like Topps but almost 1/3 of the OPC set had
different poses/images than Topps.
In late 1970's, OPC card fronts appeared similar to Topps but sometimes
included traded information saying "Now with XXXX". They were able to do
this as the OPC cards were printed much later into the season.
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