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.
1952 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
1952 is often thought of as Topps 1st baseball card set, but it was not.
Topps issued several smaller baseball card sets prior to their huge 1952 set.
Topps buzz word was "BIGGER is BETTER" for their 1952 Topps set which
Topps described as: "GIANT IN BOTH SIZE and NUMBER of CARDS" (407).
Key card in the 1952 Topps set is #311 MICKEY MANTLE.
Often called Mickey Mantle's Rookie card - BUT IT IS NOT. That honor
goes to his 1951 Bowman.
1952 Topps "High Numbers" (#311-#407), are very, very scarce with an
interesting story:
This HUGE set was released in series weeks apart. By the last (6th)
series, baseball season was over and football starting.
Candy shops had plenty of baseball cards from earlier series
so most cancelled their orders for the last series creating the scarcity.
Adding interest is how Topps disposed of the now un-needed cards including
THOUSANDS of 1952 Topps MICKEY MANTLE's. They dumped them into the Atlantic
Ocean like most of New York's trash in those days.
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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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1985 Leaf Baseball
In 1985 Donruss created a special version of its baseball cards
(1985 Leaf) in an attempt to enter the Canadian baseball card market.
Except for the addition of a colorful green leaf, the card fronts
were virtually identical to Donruss cards. The most interesting
difference occurred on the back where the Leaf cards featured
text in both French and English !
At only 264 cards, the Leaf set was much smaller than Donruss with it's
660 cards. But ... because of it's smaller set size the Leaf
set has a much higher percentage of star cards. There was also
a special two-card "Canadian Greats" subset with paintings of Dave Stieb and
Tim Raines.
Top rookies are: Roger Clemens, Kirby Puckett, Orel Hershiser,
Dwight Gooden and Mark Lamgston.
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Protecting and Storing your Card Collection
There are many different ways to protect, organize and store your sports cards.
Soft Sleeves
also called "penny sleeves" are the most basic protection for your cards.
Made of thin plastic, they come in packs of 100 and are very inexpensive.
Top Loads
are rigid plastic holders and a step up in protection over "soft sleeves".
Called top-loads because you place the card thru a thin opening at the top.
They come in many sizes for regular cards upto 8-1/2 x 11 for magazines and
even larger.
Screw-Down Acrylic Holders
These are sometimes used for better, more expensive cards. Small screws hold
two pieces of clear acrylic together. In a variety of sizes and thickness
that not only protect the card but can funciton as a paper weight or display
item.
There are also Single-Screw Screw-Downs that use only 1 screw to seal the holder.
They are easier to use and provide the same type of protectionas regular screwdowns
and they are also much less expensive costing as little as .30 in quantity
while 1 inch or 2 inch acrylic screw-downs can cost upto several dollars.
© 1995-2019 "InterNet's Baseball Card Store" / Joseph Juhasz ... All Rights Reserved
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