It was Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi. Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas. Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio. All may have seemed like good ideas at the time for the teams that gave up the guys who wound up in the Hall of Fame, but in the end went down as a lopsided giveaway. At some point in the 1980s, when one collector traded away his 1916 Babe Ruth … [Read more...]
1962 Topps Football Bucks Money In The Bank For Collectors
Way before the NFL became a lucrative business, it was money in the bank for Topps. The company’s 1962 Football Bucks insert assigned money values to players in a 48-piece set, and there was some bang to those bucks. The NFL was beginning to emerge as a “money” sport. The league signed a large television deal in 1962, and players were beginning to command higher … [Read more...]
Record-Setting 1914 Baltimore News Ruth Card Has Intriguing Back Story
The announcement that a 1914 Baltimore News baseball card of Babe Ruth sold for a record-breaking price is intriguing, but so is the back story behind the card. Collectable, the fractional shares platform, announced the sale of the Ruth card to a private collector on Wednesday. Collectable, which has valued the first card depicting the Bambino at “north of $6 million,” … [Read more...]
1914 Baltimore News Ruth Sold for Record Price; Will Hit Fractional Shares Market
One of about ten known copies of Babe Ruth’s first baseball card—issued when he was still a minor leaguer—has just become the most expensive baseball card ever sold, but this time collectors and fans will have a chance to buy in and hold a very small ownership stake. Fractional shares platform Collectable announced the sale of a 1914 Baltimore News card Wednesday … [Read more...]
1963 Topps Peel-Offs Set Filled With Baseball Hall Of Famers
The 1960s are a haven for insert collectors. Posters, decals, game cards... you never knew exactly what Topps was going to toss into its packs as a free bonus. The 1963 Topps Peel-Off set offered a bigger, bolder, more colorful look than the stamps that had accompanied the 1961 and '62 cards. This insert set gave collectors some big names, with 41% of the subjects … [Read more...]
Hoops Unicorn: 1969-70 Topps Basketball Box Coming to Auction
Topps had been out of the basketball card business for 12 years when a phone call between the company and the league office led to a revival. They hadn’t sold all that well in 1957-58, but the arrival of Lew Alcindor apparently made it worth another shot. Just about every 24-pack wax box was opened at some point, but there’s one high quality survivor that’s about to … [Read more...]
Latest Installment of Hall T206 Collection Auction Set to Open
The latest installment in a multi-year auction distributing one man’s massive collection of T206 cards to the masses will get underway next week. Heritage Auctions plans to launch Part VII of the ongoing series of sales featuring cards from David Hall’s ten-year quest to collect not just a couple of complete T206 sets, but every variation and oddity within it he … [Read more...]
10 Great Sandy Koufax Cards
He was a bonus baby, snared by the Brooklyn Dodgers out of high school as a pitching prospect of enormous proportion. His big league debut came 60 years ago next month at age 19 and was over by age 30. Any list of the best Sandy Koufax baseball cards has fewer standard issues to choose from than you’d find of virtually any other Hall of Famer, but that would sell … [Read more...]
1961 Nu-Card Scoops Highlighted Game’s Greats, Big Events
Baseball was covered religiously in newspapers during the 1950s and ’60s, with eye-popping headlines and black-and-white photographs of players in action. That was the template for the 1961 Nu-Card Baseball Scoops set, which was a smaller version of the 1960 Nu-Card Baseball Hi-Lites. Scoops cards measure 2½ inches by 3½ inches, which were the same measurements for … [Read more...]
1913 Fatima Team Cards Offer Lower Cost Option for Pre-War Collectors
Tobacco companies had been including baseball cards in their packages as an incentive for more than 30 years when the Liggett and Myers Company decided to use a similar promotion inside its tins of Turkish Blend cigarettes in 1913. These were a little different, though. Instead of individual photos, they used posed team pictures. Today, the underrated 1913 … [Read more...]