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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1934,1935,1936 Diamond Matchbooks
During much of the Great Depression, matchbook collecting swept the country !
Sports matchbooks started appearing in the 1930s, most issued by Diamond Match Company
of New York. Over the next few years, several series were issued with
similar designs; b/w photo of the player on front with short write-up
and stats on back. The player's name and team was also printed on the 'saddle'.
Please consider the following info as approximate.
1934's first baseball release featured 200 players, in 4 different background
colors (red,blue,green and orange) for a total of 800 different covers.
The set features plenty of Hall-of-Fame greats like Dizzy Dean and Mel Ott.
1935's issue was tiny with only 24 total covers (8 red,8 blue,8 green).
A third series was later released with 200 or more different covers (players/colors).
1930's matchbook covers appear to be huge bargains for collectors as their current values
are fractions of the value of Goudey and other baseball cards from the same era.
Click for complete
1935-1936 Diamond Matchbook Checklist and Prices
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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1948 Bowman Football Cards
Checklist & Values
1948 Bowman Football takes it's place in the early history of football cards.
While not as flashy as the 1935 National Chicles football issue the 1948
Bowman Football set had great players in real photographs !
The set was tiny (in both card size and number of cards) containing only
108 smallish 2-1/16" x 2-1/2" inch cards. The honor of top rookie in the
set is easily Sammy Baugh and there appear to be no variations in the set.
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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