1961 Topps # 45 N.L. ERA Leaders (Don Drysdale,Bob Friend)

Also Mike McCormick,Ernie Broglio & Stan Williams (Dodgers/Pirates/Giants/Cardinals)

Grade	NM/MINT to MINT
Book Value	n/a
Our Price	$ 23.95 Add to cart

1961 Topps # 45 N.L. ERA Leaders (Don Drysdale,Bob Friend) cards value

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.

1956 Adventure cards

Issued by Gum Products Inc., this 100-card set covered a variety of subjects. Featuring mostly non-sport like military or wild life, it also had a few sports related cards. The most famous being Max Schmeling's card, removed very early from the set for featuring the Nazi symbol, making it by far the scarcest and most expensive in the set.

The information on back of many cards was somewhat spotty and sometimes wrong. Card #39 claims Yamamoto was shot down in 1953 rather than 1943. Another in demand and interesting card is Boston Red Sox Rookie sensation Harry Agganis and mention of his death on back.

Click for complete 1956 Adventure (Gum Inc.)
Note: You may be on that page right now.

1981 Donruss Baseball

Collector's were excited when they heard Donruss was entering the baseball card market. Excitement turned to disappointment once they saw the cards. They were awful ! Print on very cheap, weak card stock with were un-inspiring images.
TOP ROOKIES: Hall-of-Famers Tim Raines and Harold Baines.
Who will ever forget "Fernando Mania" ???
Apparently Donruss ...
WIth no Fernando rookie card in the Donruss set, the Topps and Fleer sets (with Fernando) became nuch more desirable. Fernando Valenzuela is NOT in the Hall-of-Fame, but he was 100% the most popular player of 1981.
Another rookie of note was Danny Ainge who later became a NBA basketball player with the Boston Celtics.
Click for complete 1981 Donruss Baseball Checklist, Values & Info
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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.