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.
1955 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
1955 Topps was the first of 2 years of horizontal card designs.
As with 1952, 1953 & 1954, cards were again a tad larger than today's
standard. A nice feature, facsimile autographs, again appeared on the cards.
The set came in 2 series, #1-160 and scarcer "High Numbers" #161-210.
Due to the contract battles between Topps & Bowman, Cards #175,186,203 & 209
were never issued. Topps eventually won the war, buying Bowman making 1955
the last year for Bowman cards. But the damage was done as Topps had to
leave out many stars including Mickey Mantle & Stan Musial.
There were a total of (15) Hall of Famers in the 1955 set !!!
Top ROOKIEs: Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax & Harmon Killebrew
Top Stars: Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Al Kaline, Ernie Banks, Warren Spahn,
Jackie Robinson, Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra & Duke Snider.
"The Golden Greek" Harry Agganis, a popular 1955 Topps card, is a tragic
story, Agganis, a rising young star, died after his first card was issued.
A football star at Boston U., he turned down an offer from the Cleveland
Browns and became the starting first baseman. Shortly after he came down
with pneumonia and died of a Pulmonary Embolism.
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1954 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
No only did the 1954 Topps issue feature the rookie cards of some of the
greatest baseball players of all-time, it also was the 1st appearance of
Ted Williams on a Topps card. Topps was so proud of this they made
Ted the FIRST (#1) and LAST (#250) card in the set.
1954 Topps was released in three different series, (#1-50),
a tougher mid-series (#51-75), and finally (#76-250). Of note for fans
of variations, first series cards were issued in Canada with gray backs.
ROOKIE cards of future Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Al Kaline & Ernie Banks
along with cards of SuperStars Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Duke Snider,
Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Jackie Robinson and tons more !!!
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1956 Topps Pins
Checklist & Values
WOW ! Few issues compare to the 1956 Topps Pins set. The colorful and
attractive 1-1/8" diameter pins were packaged with bubble gum
and featured a color photo of player on front with a pin clasp on back.
Many of the images for pins are the same as on the 1956 Topps cards.
If you collect 1956 Topps cards than YOU MUST add at least one of these
1956 Topps Pin to your collection.
Packed with stars (no Mickey Mantle), the 1956 Topps Pins set
also had a few scarcities such as Chuck Stobbs, Hector Lopez &
Chuck Diering.
In the end, collectors of the day preferred cards to pins and Topps cut back
the 1956 Topps Pin set from a planned 90 pins to just 60.
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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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