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.
1955 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
1955 Topps was the first of 2 years of horizontal card designs.
As with 1952, 1953 & 1954, cards were again a tad larger than today's
standard. A nice feature, facsimile autographs, again appeared on the cards.
The set came in 2 series, #1-160 and scarcer "High Numbers" #161-210.
Due to the contract battles between Topps & Bowman, Cards #175,186,203 & 209
were never issued. Topps eventually won the war, buying Bowman making 1955
the last year for Bowman cards. But the damage was done as Topps had to
leave out many stars including Mickey Mantle & Stan Musial.
There were a total of (15) Hall of Famers in the 1955 set !!!
Top ROOKIEs: Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax & Harmon Killebrew
Top Stars: Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Al Kaline, Ernie Banks, Warren Spahn,
Jackie Robinson, Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra & Duke Snider.
"The Golden Greek" Harry Agganis, a popular 1955 Topps card, is a tragic
story, Agganis, a rising young star, died after his first card was issued.
A football star at Boston U., he turned down an offer from the Cleveland
Browns and became the starting first baseman. Shortly after he came down
with pneumonia and died of a Pulmonary Embolism.
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1957 Topps Football Cards
Checklist & Values
In 1957 Topps created the modern day card by reducing the size of
cards to current standard 2-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches. Topps also increased
the set to 154 players and dramatically changed card format to a horizontal
split-card. Player selection was awesome with (31) future Hall-of-Famers.
1957's top rookies were Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas & Paul Hornung.
The only variation is card #58 Willard Sherman.
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1957 Topps Football card values and prices
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1955 / 1959 / 1960 Armour Hot Dog Coins
Checklist & Values
As a kid I loved shopping with mom hoping to find my next favorite
food - the one with baseball cards !!!
In 1955,1959 & 1960, kids could enjoy hot dogs with their cards
thanks to Armour's coins in 1955, 1959 & 1960.
The 1-1/2 inch plastic coins, almost the same each year, came in
many colors with several rare and perhaps even 1-of-1,
making a "master" set almost impossible.
Add in the variations and you can imagine the task.
See sportscollectorsdaily for great 1955,1959 & 1960 Armour baseball
coins article.
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1955/1959/1960 Armour Baseball Coins
Checklist & Values
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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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