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.
Autographed Gateway Cachets
Gateway Stamp Company has provided collectors well over 1 MILLION
authenticated certified autographs over the last 30 years.
Silk Cachets from Gateway Stamp Company
Even though a "stamp company", Gateway rarely dealt in stamps, going down
a new and creative road becoming one of the world's most unique secrets in
autograph collecting combining the best in art, color photographs, history
and autographs with their full-color silk cachet envelopes. Gateway's first
client was Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock with hundreds to follow.
WHAT ARE FULL-COLOR SILK CACHETS?
A "cachet" is a message or design on an envelope marking a postal event.
"Full-color silk" refers to the delicate material into which the
original art and photography are printed. After which each silk is applied
to the envelope, signed by the player and then officially post-marked by the
U.S. Post Office IN THE CITY OF THE EVENT !!!
WHY POSTMARKS?
The key to EVERY Gateway cachet is the postmark.The best way to mark a date
in history is with a postmark. The rules governing the granting of
postmarks GUARANTEE that NO Gateway issue can EVER be re-issued protecting
the value of the autographed, postmarked cachets !!!
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Vintage Topps 1956 Baseball Cards
Checklist & Prices
1956 Topps were slightly larger (3-3/4" by 2 5/8") horizontal cards
similar to 1955 Topps cards, some even sharing portraits with 1954 and 1955
Topps cards. Team cards & checklists appeared for the first time in 1956.
With Bowman gone, after missing the last 3 years, Mickey Mantle was back !!!
A fun & simple set, 1956 Topps had no high numbers or expensive rookies
but for serious 1956 collectors, there are over 200 variations.
Most variations deal with card stock (gray or white back).
For #101-180 gray appears to outnumber white about 9-to-1.
Many team cards had 2 or 3 variations with team names
Left, Center or Right.
There are 2 great cards: #31 Hank Aaron which actually pictures Willie Mays
sliding home and #135 Mickey Mantle.
Mantle shown leaping high into the stands robbing a home run !
Artist did a great job showing Mantle making the catch !
BUT ... Mantle looked great leaping but the ball flew over his glove.
The 1956 Topps Pins used same portrait photos as the cards.
Click for complete
1956 Topps Pins Checklist and Prices
Click for more info and complete
1956 Topps Baseball card checklist, values and prices.
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Topps Vault & Proofs
Auctioneer Guernsey's went thru Topps offices gathering over 3,000
items for the auction. Topps spokesman reported auction sales of
OVER $1.5 million !!! Additional sales were made from a mail-only
auction. Collector Keith Olbermann, at the auction, described it
as an archaeological dig.
Topps archive material continued to accumulate after the auction
ending up with another treasure of over 250,000 transparencies,
uncut sheets, color separations, art, photos, slides, proof sheets
& wrappers, canceled checks, contracts and one-of-a-kind
items to sell.
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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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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