The thing about presenting good, solid research is that it often leads to crowd sourcing of more good, solid research.
If you read collector Roy Carlson’s latest vintage Topps team card study that we published here last month, you undoubtedly learned some things about the cards and those who appeared on them. There was the player who appeared on three different team cards in the same year. Those who show up on team cards but never on a regular issue card. Sons of famous broadcasters who were batboys and batboys who became bad boys (and good ones).
There was Charlie DiGiovanna, the clubhouse man who forged more Brooklyn Dodger autographs than anyone could ever count and showed up on the Dodgers 1956 team card (which actually pictures the ’55 championship team). Collector Eric Phillips wrote in to state that it appears Charlie also showed up on Duke Snider’s ’56 card.
The photo used for Duke’s card, which shows him crossing home plate after a homer, would certainly seem to indicate that’s true.
Collectors also wrote Roy to discuss players who had appeared on team cards after their deaths.
“Collectors Todd Carte from Charleston, WV and Matthew Glidden from Cambridge, MA noticed that Thurman Munson was featured in the 1980 New York Yankees team card, the year after he was killed on August 2, 1979 when his Cessna Citation jet he was piloting crashed in Akron, OH,” Roy writes in adding these new notes to his original story.
“This observation impelled me to see if there were any other ball players featured in a Topps vintage team card after their death. Of the 6 players I confirmed, only Roberto Clemente had a posthumous player card the same year (1973).”
Orioles pitcher Tom Gastall drowned after his plane crashed into Chesapeake Bay in September 1956. Pirates pitcher Bob Moose died in a traffic accident in October of 1976. Danny Thompson died after surgery from complications of leukemia in December of 1976 and Lyman Bostock was shot and killed on Sept. 24, 1978.
Roy has identified 18,248 of the 18,500 individuals (3,800 different) to appear on Topps team cards from 1951-1980 but as he wrote in the article, there are a few team photos used to create those cards that he’s still looking for. Hopefully once again our readers will come to the rescue. You can send him an email at dgcarlson5@gmail.com…and you can also request his entire database of the individuals on those team cards, fully searchable.
By the way, if you missed the first of Roy’s two groundbreaking stories on vintage team cards, you can see that one here. It, too, is well worth your time if you love vintage cards.
