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.
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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1957 Topps Baseball Cards
Checklist & Values
1957 was the beginning of the modern era of baseball cards and their to this day
standard size of 2-1/2" x 3-1/2".
Many collectors consider the 1957 set the most attractive of the 1950's sets.
Of note is a fun error card picturing Hank Aaron batting left-handed.
The error was never corrected so there is no extra value.
The set included some very neat multi-player cards and was PACKED with ROOKIES !!!
Frank & Brooks Robinson, Don Drysdale, Jim Bunning, Rocky Colavito, Kubek & Richardson
Note: You may be on that page right now.
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Auction's most costly vintage baseball cards
The history of vintage baseball card auctions is long and colorful.
T-206 Honus Wagner tobacco cards have sold for upto $2.8 million in
auction. The "Holy Grail of Sports Cards", it's extreme-high auction
value can mostly be attributed to great PR and "auction fever".
It's not close to being the rarest baseball card and Honus Wagner is not
Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle. Yes, the T-206 set is beautiful & special but
because of the # of cards and scarcities, few collector's try to complete,
which should keep auction competition down compared to say 1933 Goudey
or 1952 Topps baseball card issues.
BUT IT DOES NOT...
There's a story Wagner banned his card because he was anti-tobacco
but there are other stories about financial considerations.
You surely have heard of PSA and may even know that this card was the
FIRST they ever graded. But did you know that dealer (B.l. .ast.o name
encoded) admitted tampering with the card, perhaps having it trimmed
down to size, before PSA graded it so highly for the auction.
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How long have sports cards been around ? (part 2)
The first important and mainstream basketball set was issued by Bowman in 1948.
Other than a Topps set in 1957-58 and a 1961-62 Fleer set, there were no
mainstream basketball sets issued until Topps started producing yearly sets
beginning with their 1969-70 set featuring the rookie card of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
who then went under the name of Lew Alcindor.
In hockey, there were a few sets issued in the 1910's and while O-Pee-Chee issued
some sets in the 1930's, the real modern sets began in 1951 with the itroduction
of Parkhurst's first set.
In racing, while cards go back as far as the early Indy car days of 1911,
modern racing sets began in 1988 with the issues released by MAXX.
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