1961 Topps #582 Earl Battey All-Star SCARCE HIGH # (Twins)
| Grade | NM/MINT to MINT |
|---|---|
| Book Value | $ 30 |
| Our Price |
$ 54.95
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|
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on vintage baseball, football, basketball, hockey, sport and non-sports cards.
1963 Fleer Baseball Cards
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The 1963 Fleer baseball card set planned to be larger but Topps
lawsuit cut it short leaving just 66 cards plus a checklist. 
But what 66 cards !!! 1963 Fleer cards are attractive & packed:
also Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax ... plus 2 very scare Short Prints. 
Maury Wills' Rookie card is an interesting story.
In the majors since 1959, quickly became a superstar.
So why 1963 for his rookie ??? Well, back in 1959 Topps deemed
Wills NOT WORTHY enough to be on their baseball cards. 
Wills was upset at the slight from Topps. After his 1962 MVP, Topps came
a knocking but he said "NO !". No Topps cards !
Finally, in 1967 came a very scarce hi# Topps card, his first Topps and
also most costly card. Adding interest, he had a 1961 Post Cereal card,
years BEFORE
his 'official' rookie. He also photo-bombed a 1960 Topps World Series card,
trying to tag Luis Aparicio at 2nd.
1978 Kellogg's Baseball |
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.
