How I got into All-American customs

This is a column that I wrote for a recent issue of Sports Collectors Digest. That issue had a feature on the original Topps 1955 All-American football cards.

When editor T.S. O’Connell invited me to create a column for this issue of SCD in which the 1955 Topps All-American college football card set was going to be featured, I knew I had to participate.
It has probably been two years or more since my own “updates” to that set outpaced Topps’ original production.

As of now I have created 122 cards in that format. My homage to the ’55 AA set includes 121 different players (I created two different Troy Aikman cards, Oklahoma and UCLA) representing 73 different colleges.

Many of my custom card creations have been featured in these pages in the past seven years since I began making my own “cards that never were.”

Once I realized that modern technology had created the tools to allow me to fulfill my childhood ambition of making my own cards, it was virtually a no-brainer to begin with the 1955 All-American style.

That was one of my favorite bubblegum card sets as a kid, and provides one of my earliest childhood memories. I have a firm recollection of sitting on the floor of my kindergarten classroom opening a red-white-and-blue wax pack of All-Americans during afternoon recess while the rest of the kids were outside playing. I was inside while they were outside because health issues often limited my mobility, even as a four-year old.
I don’t remember who I got in that pack, but I do remember that the Army players were my favorites, probably due to a combination of the martial sword-and-rifle logo and the players’ gold helmets. (I have created three Army cards in my own series: Glenn Davis, who Topps did not include in 1955, probably because he was under contract to Bowman, a Glenn Davis-Doc Blanchard combination card titled “Mr. Outside & Mr. Inside,” and a card of quarterback Arnold Tucker, who directed the offense of those USMA powerhouse teams of the 1940s.)

When my card collecting interests were revived in the mid-1970s, the first football card set I wanted to reclaim was the All-Americans. By then, through the courtesy of Larry Fritsch’s checklist books, I knew that there were 100 cards in the set, including a Four Horsemen of Notre Dame card that I know I had never encountered in my childhood.

By about 1982 I had completed a set of the originals in what I recall as high-grade in those pre-slab days. I wrote a heavily illustrated article about the set for one of the early issues of Baseball Cards magazine, then sold the set.

Around 2003 when I began my card creation efforts, I began piecing together another set of the 1955s. I needed the originals so that I could copy school logos and the cartoons on the backs. This time I endeavored to put the set together in at least Ex-Mt condition, as certified by PSA, SGC and SCD, though I removed each card from its plastic tomb and inserted it into a binder after scanning.

During this process I discovered that while some of the cards in the set were merely expensive (Thorpe, Horsemen, Grange, Rockne, etc.), others were truly hard to find in Ex-Mt or better condition, usually due to centering issues. Such cards were among the last to find their way into my current set. Besides cards #1 Herman Hickman and #100 Fats Henry, they included #3 Ed Weir, #24 Ken Strong, #28 Mel Hein, and, the last card I added to my second set, #99 Don Whitmire.
I believe the only cards in my current set that aren’t Ex-Mt are the Whizzer White and Gaynell Tinsley error version, which I have in VG-Ex or EX.

Since beginning my custom cards hobby with the 1955 AA style I have expanded my repertoire of baseball and football cards to about two dozen formats, but I don’t think I’ll ever be “done” with my ’55s. While I have done nearly 125 cards in that design, I still haven’t completed what I have named by Second Series (I consider the Topps originals to be the First Series). I’ve left card #152 unmade. On the checklist cards I have created in a Fifties Topps format, that card is listed as Randy Moss. Long ago I acquired some nice images of Moss from his days at Marshall, but have delayed putting together his college card. I originally did so because I wasn’t sure he was going to be remembered for anything beyond his faux mooning of Packer fans in the end zone after a touchdown a few years back. Now, his legacy as one of the greats is assured, and I’m just waiting for his NFL career to end so that I can craft an appropriate biography for the back of his card.

I’m already 22 cards into a Third Series of All-Americans, and I don’t see a Fourth in the offing. My pace of All-American creations has slowed considerably from more than one per month when I first started to six or eight per year now.

My to-do list of All-Americans consists of cards for which I have appropriate photos and just the lack the impetus to see them through. Besides three of four of my existing cards that’s I’d like to someday “rehabilitate” by using more recently acquired superior photos, the Top 10 on my list of cards to add include former NFL greats Earl Campbell, Jack Ham, Franco Harris, Joe Perry, Ollie Matson and Ray Guy. Also on the drawing board are 1950s baseball stars Ted Kluszewski, Moose Skowron and Jackie Jensen, and actor Tommy Lee Jones.

I also maintain a wish list of players whose cards I’d like to do, but whose photos in college uniform have thus far eluded me.

The “most wanted” on that list is Donald Driver. My efforts to acquire a reproducible photo of the great Packers receiver and fan favorite in an Alcorn State uniform have been unavailing.
Two former NFL stars of whom I’d like good college pictures are Jim Taylor from LSU, and Rocky Bleier at Notre Dame.

Surprisingly elusive has been a photo of future baseball Hall of Famer Frank Thomas in an Auburn football uniform.

Actors Dean Cain, Carl Weathers, Woody Strode and Johnny Mack Brown all played college ball, but I haven’t yet been able to find football photos for them.

One player you’ve never heard of is a personal project of mine. I went to grade school and high school with Jim Bond in Fond du Lac, Wis. After high school he received a scholarship to Michigan State. When that signing was announced, the local paper ran a photo of Jim and some MSU dignitaries in which Bond is holding up a Spartans jersey with the number “007”. This was in 1969, at the height of the first popularity for Sean Connery James Bond movies. Bond injured his knee early on and didn’t have much of a college career, but it would be fun to do a card of someone from my old neighborhood.

As you can see from my wish list and checklists, my All-American series encompasses a wide variety of players from college stars to NFL and MLB stars, TV and movie actors, presidents, personal friends and relatives of friends, and even a few fictional characters. That’s part of the appeal of making you own card set, you get to create the line-up.

If any of the readers are able to provide or direct me to a good photo of any of these players, please contact me at scbcguy@yahoo.com, or write me at P.O. Box 8, Iola, WI 54945. I always offer to share my first printing with those who provide photos I need.

And, unlike many other custom card creators, I do actually print my cards, front and back, and cut them into single cards. I’ve done as few as six cards of a player (that’s how many fronts or backs in the classic Topps size of 3-3/4” x 2-5/8” I can fit onto a sheet of 8-1/2” x 11” label paper on which I print before sandwiching them to a cardboard core) to as many as perhaps two dozen.

There are currently only four complete sets of my custom All-American cards in existence. I maintain two sets, and two collectors have prevailed upon me to provide them with complete sets. Of the single cards, I have given away some and sold some.

Early on I found out it’s much easier to offer cards for sale than to explain to a dedicated Alabama fan why I can’t get him a Bart Starr college card because of the time and handwork involved in printing and cutting the cards.

While the occasional sales help keep me in special paper and printer ink, the real reason I make my All-Americans (and all my other custom cards) is to satisfy a deep creative urge that, as mentioned, has been with me since childhood. I relish the challenge of colorizing or otherwise revamping a photo to make it fit my format. And I greatly enjoy the research that goes into getting the 90 or so words I need to write the backs. I once spent an entire afternoon in the library scouring biographies of JFK to gather the details of his undistinguished football days at Harvard.

Ever since I sold most of my card collection to Alan Rosen in 1993, I haven’t been much of a card collector. I seldom buy a card these days for any purpose other than to provide a template for one of my customs. Making and sharing these cards has become my real hobby.

You can see color galleries of many of my All-American cards and most of my other football and baseball creations in my Photobucket albums at www.tinyurl.com/customcards.

Worch Cigar minor league checklist enhanced

As a result of a string of eBay auctions in late July and early August, we were able to add three players to the 1933-1935 Worch Cigar American Association premiums checklist.

The Worch premiums are often confusing to inexperienced collectors because the name of the sponsor appears nowhere on the 3-7/16" x 5-7/16" blank-backed black-and-white premiums. The postcard-sized player cards were evidently available by sending cigar bands to the company's address in Minneapolis. Many of the surviving cards have the original envelope in which they were mailed, thus establishing the issuer's identity.

Worch Cigar cards are divided into two types: major leaguers and minor leaguers. To date, 146 different players are known (many with two or more poses) among the major leaguers, which appear to have been issued in 1933. Typical prices on common major league players are $100 in Near Mint. Most Hall of Famers bring $300-400 in that condition, with the big guns like Gehrig and Ruth up to $2,000.

The minor league players, until recently, numbered 57, all from teams in the American Association circa 1933-1934. While the minor league checklist is heavy on Twin Cities' players from the Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints, there are a smattering of players from the Columbus Redbirds, the Kansas City Blues and one or two other teams.

Recent book value on the minor leaguers has been about 50% of the major leaguers, with only one Hall of Famer, Dave Bancroft, manager of the 1933 Millers, known. Catalog values may have to be adjusted upwards, however, based on the recent sale of 10 cards in the eBay sales. All sold at prices at least 3X the book value.

The best sellers among the minor leaguers were three heretofore uncataloged players: Johnny Gill, Minneapolis (1934-1935), Marty McManus, St. Paul manager in 1935, and Monty Stratton, St. Paul (1935). Stratton, of course, was the subject of The Stratton Story, in which Jimmy Stewart portrayed the pitcher trying to return to professional baseball with a wooden leg after a hunting accident. In about NM condition, those cards brought $287, $227, and $320, respectively.

And so it goes in the endeavor of checklisting vintage minor league baseball cards.

'71T high-number proofs are 1/1

Some strange and wonderful things have emerged from the Topps Vault since much of the contents of the gum company's card archives began to be offered in eBay auctions some years back.

For various reasons, not all of the goodies are "catalogable" (there's that word again). One grouping that does seem worthy of inclusion in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, however, is what appears to be an early Topps trial of high-gloss coating on card fronts.

According to Buffao, N.Y., collector Mike Chauby, who brought these cards to our attention, the experiment was probably not a success because the cards in his possession show signs that the glossy coating was either applied unevenly or dried unevenly. This resulted in streaks, pock marks and other imperfections on the surface. As well, the cards' showed a proclivity to scratches on the glossy surface.

What is especially interesting in the Topps experiment is that they chose to try the glossy coating on high-number 1971 baseball cards. While it is impossible to know when the experiment was conducted, it is not unreasonable to presume it was contemporaneously with the issue of the high-number '71s, when a sheet of the cards would have been at hand. Topps did not release a true high-gloss finish card until its 1984 Tiffany baseball set.

Beginning on June 16, 2008, and continuing throughout July of that year, Topps offered a handful of the glossy '71 high numbers every couple of days in its eBay auctions. Each card was sealed in a thick plastic slab and each card had a Topps hologram attached to a back corner, guaranteeing authenticity. Some purists might decry the placing of a sticker directly onto the card back, rather than on the holder, but in reality, it would not be at all difficult to fake these cards by applying a glossy coat to the front of "regular" '71T high numbers.

Each of the test cards is known in only one example, but it is not known how many of the 108 cards in Topps' Sixth Series of 1971 (#644-752) were involved in the experiment. The gloss coat may have been applied to a full sheet of 132 cards (in which case there would be two examples of some), or it may have been done working with a half-sheet of 66 cards. It is known that some of surviving test cards are among the series' short-prints.

Classifying these glossy '71T high numbers is problematic. They are not really a test issue in the sense that term is usually applied. Test issues were usually released for public sale in limited quantities and markets. They are also not strictly speaking proof cards because they are completely printed, front and back. The hobby has never really embraced the term experimental issue, but that probably comes closest to an accurate description of these 1/1 rarities.

Chauby had maintained records for more than a dozen of the glossy cards when they were originally sold on eBay. Winning bids ranged from $9.99, which would have been the minimum bid, to more than $30 for the Expos team card and Rich Allen, toa high of $66.65 for Jose Martinez. The average of 17 cards for which Chauby recorded prices was $20.04. Unfortunately, if the Hall of Famers and other high-demand cards in the Sixth Series were ever offered, their selling prices are not recorded. These would include Sparky Anderson, Boog Powell, the Dusty Baker-Don Baylor rookie card, and Luis Aparicio. Given their 1-of-1 status, those 2008 prices seem cheap and can likely be attributed to the fact that these cards were previously unknown and uncataloged within the hobby.

Investigating Baseball Magazine team posters

A recent inquiry about an uncataloged Baseball Magazine poster on the Net54 vintage baseball card forum has called into question the accuracy of the current checklist of those premium as published in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.

The posters, which were listed in the American Card Catalog system as M114, were premiums that were issued by the baseball monthly magazine as a subscription premium, and were also offered for individual sale between 1910-1957.

The sizes and formats of the posters varied over the years between about 9" x 12-1/4" for single-player posters to 9" x 20" for some of the team pictures. They were printed in sepia tones on semi-gloss paper stock.

The Baseball Magazine posters are one of a handful of issues that are checklisted in the Standard Catalog not on the basis of known surviving examples, but rather on what was advertised by issuer as being available. Other examples include the 1902-1911 Sporting Life cabinets (W600), the 1888-1889 Old Judge cabinets (N173) and the 1911 Obak cabinets (T4).

In the cases of the Baseball Magazine posters and Sporting Life cabinets, the checklists were generated from advertising within the pages of those periodicals. In the cases of the Old Judge and Obak cabinets, the checklist was derived from lists printed as cigarette package inserts or coupons. In all cases, these contemporary offers indicate only what was available, or even intended to be available, to persons redeeming coupons or subscribing.

Especially in the cases of the cabinet cards, it is possible that certain advertised cards were never ordered by customers and thus were never produced or perhaps were scrapped after the promotions had run their course. This explains why in the cases of some of these issues, the biggest names among the stars of the day are more common in collections today than the more obscure players. It makes sense that when offered a list of players from which to chose, more fans elected to receive a King Kelly, Ty Cobb, or Christy Mathewson cabinet than one of a small-market team's utility infielder or a minor league player.

The Baseball Magazine posters list in the Standard Catalog has been published unchanged for most, if not all, 20 editions of the book. Now, it appears, changes are in order.

The team poster that was posted on Net54 was of the Chicago White Sox "World's Champions" of 1917. It is 7-1/2" x 14-1/2" and features the usual indicia found on most M114s concerning the publisher, etc. Such a poster is not listed in the catalog, which has only two team posters listed for 1917, the Red Sox and the Giants. None are listed for 1918. The Giants and White Sox were the World Series participants in 1917, and it seems likely that it would have been 1918 before posters with the World's Champions notice could have been available as a magazine premium.

That poster appears in an advertisement from Baseball Magazine that offers many team and player posters dating from 1914-1917. The ad is undated, though a small "10 - 19" in the lower-left corner may indicate an October, 1919, issue date.

The upshot is, based on the content of the ad, it looks like the checklist should be revised to include a 1917 White Sox poster and a 1914 St. Louis Cardinals poster. The listing of a Red Sox poster for 1917 may have been in error. If, after suitable inquiry, it cannot be proven to exist, either in a surviving example or included in an ad, the Rex Sox poster will likely be dropped from the checklist.

Even more on Indians' picture packs

This forum has been blessed with quite a bit of new information on Cleveland Indians picture packs in recent months. Most will eventually find its way into the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. The trend continues with the first checklisting of a 1959 photo pack.

This (probably partial) picture pack was offered on eBay on Aug. 5, when the beat-up envelope and 19 player pictures -- each described as exhibiting some light discoloration -- sold for $36.51. The envelope is a bit misleading in that it shows Chief Wahoo presenting drawings of portrait photos when, in reality, the individual pictures all seem to be posed action shots.

I'd like to have included a photo of one of the pictures in this presentation, but the seller did not respond to my request for a scan. (What's up with that? Doesn't he know who I am?) UPDATE: Thanks to reader Bob Wong, we now have a photo of one of the picture from the 1959 issue. Jim Bolger only played eight games for the Tribe, having come to Cleveland from the Cubs in a pre-season trade and being traded to the Phillies on June 6, 1959.

The pictures are in the usual Indians' photo pack format of white-bordered, blank-backed photos with a facsimile autograph for identification. If the seller was accurate in his description, these 1959 pictures were a bit longer, at 9-1/4", than normal for the genre, but in the same 6-1/2" width.

The checklist here shows only 19 players and manager Joe Gordon, so it is likely incomplete. Indians' pix packs of the era typically contained 24-30 or more pictures.

Gary Bell

Jim Bolger

Dick Brown
Al Cicotte

Rocky Colavito

Don Ferrarese

Tito Francona
Joe Gordon

Jim “Mudcat “ Grant
Woody Held

Billy Martin

Cal McLish
Minnie Minoso

Russ Nixon

Jim Perry
Jimmy Piersall
Vic Power

Herb Score

George Strickland

Ray Webster

George Brett gets a 1974 Rookie Card

One of the advantages I have as a custom card maker in the 21st Century is the ability to "scoop" the old-time card companies with the advantage of 20-20 hindsight.

You certainly can't blame Topps for not including George Brett in its 1974 card set. In 13 games during his August-September call-up the previous season he had hit only .125 with no power.

But 35 years later, when an early image of Brett turned up on the internet (notice the uniform #25), I thought it would be fun to see how a '74 Brett would have looked.

Topps didn't use the All-Rookie Team trophy on any of its 1974 cards, but I thought it would make a nice additition to my custom and it nicely filled the space at the lower-left of the photo.

It had originally been my intention to do a 1973-style Brett card on the premise that he was going to make the majors with the Royals that season. But given his minor league stats, that would have seemed like quite a stretch.

In truth, I've never liked the 1974 Topps format and didn't like the 1973s much better, but as I worked on the '74, it kind of grew on me. Anyway, I've got a nearly complete 1973-style front and back template made, so if I ever want to make a card in that style, I'm halfway home.

Player's son reports Globe '52 Dallas addition

Cataloging the early 1950s minor league baseball card issues by the Globe Printing Co. is a painstaking endeavor.

While we probably (I wouldn't bet the ranch ot it, though) have a record of every team that actually issued the cards, we don't have complete checklists for many of those teams.

In our Nov. 22, 2009 presentation, we ran a lengthy list of players' cards from the 1952 Dallas Eagles issue. The Eagles were a Class AA Texas League farm club of the Cleveland Indians in 1952. That checklist contained 21 cards, and we speculated that since it appears that Globe printed on six-card sheets, there were probably a few players missing from our list.

We've now got confirmation of one of those "missing" cards; it's pitcher Walt Lanfranconi.

That information comes courtesy of Greg Varhely, whose father, Edward, was also a pitcher on the '52 Dallas team. Greg had found our column while surfing the 'net for information about his dad's career. Among his father's effects were a pair of the Eagles' photo albums and a stack of the Globe player cards.

Lanfranconi was the only card that wasn't in that legacy. Lanfranconi was a Vermont native who, except for World War II service in 1943-45, played pro ball from 1937 through 1953, usually at the Class AA or AAA minor league level. He also pitched in the majors, going 0-1 with the Chicago Cubs in 1941 and 4-4 with the 1947 Boston Braves.

Greg had sent scans of all of the '52 Globe Eagles he has. They are a good looking group of cards, generally featuring posed-action photos.

The back cover of the album indicates that the player cards were to be given away at "special photo nights throughout the season." That seems to have been typical of the Globe minor league cards, which explains why complete sets of most teams are virtually unknown.

Another alternate Indians picture pack. 1949?

On May 23 we presented a 1950 Cleveland Indians picture pack that differed from the long-cataloged picture pack in that instead of "facsimile autographs" the players were identified by a relatively thcik black or white script name.

The pictures otherwise followed the format used by the Tribe for its souvenir picture packs between 1947-1956. The pictures are blank-backed, 6-1/2" x 9" with players represented in either portrait or posed action photos.

We now learn, from veteran vintage collector and Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards contributor Rhett Yeakley that this type of alternative photo pack was also issued earlier, probably in 1949.

That dating is empirically based on the player photos in his possession. Yeakley has 15 pictures of what would typically be 25-30 in a contemporary Indians' picture pack. His line-up is:

• Gene Bearden
• Ray Boone
• Lou Boudreau
• Allie Clark
• Bob Feller
• Mike Garcia
• Joe Gordon
• Steve Gromek
• Jim Hegan
• Dale Mitchell
• Frank Papish
• Satchel Paige
• Thurman Tucker
• Mickey Vernon
• Sam Zoldak

Papish and Vernon were not with the Indians in 1948, so if this group represents a single issue -- and differences in picture stock on some of the players make that a big "if" -- the date of issue narrows to 1949.

Yeakley notes that two of his pictures are on paper stock that it thinner and not textured, whereas the other 13 pix are on the thicker, textured paper associated with many of the Indians' other photo pack efforts in the 1940s and 1950s. The two outliers are Mike Garcia and Ray Boone.

Yeakley also notes that the picture of Gene Bearden in this "set" is a portrait, while the Bearden photo that was pictured in our article about the 1950 set was an action pose.

Since it is likely that the pictures in Yeakley's possession share at least some of their poses with the earlier-identified 1950 set it will be hard to pin down a checklist for a specific 1949 sisue unless a complete-with-envelope set is brought to our attention. It is, however, good to know that the Cleveland "wide pen" team-issued photo packs were more than a one-year phenomenon.

Bobby Layne custom card 2.0 and 3.0

I'll admit it, I'm too anal about my custom card creations. (I'm also one of those people who believes that if you confess to a personality fault, you don't have to do anything to correct it.) That's why my "update" series of 1955 Topps All-American-style college football cards will never be complete.

Even if I worked my to-do list and my wish list down to nothing, I'd still be compelled to go back and re-do some of my earlier cards. I've been at this series for almost seven years, and some of my earlier creations leave a but to be desired. It's a combination of settling for what I now recognize are substandard player photos in the early days, and the fact that I was a rank novice in terms of Photoshop.

As my technical skills have improved, so has my eye for what will or will not make a suitable card image.

In the back of my mind I have a list of those among my 125+ cards in the 1955 format that I am not altogether satisfied with. With the completion of a new (and newer) Bobby Layne card, that list of rehabilitation projects is one card shorter.

As you can see from my first attempt (the top card), the player photo is merely OK. My recollection is that it came from a book. Thus it started out low-resolution and didn't improve when enlarged a bit for my card. The colorization of the black-and-white image also left something to be desired. Layne's hair is too yellow and . . . I'm unsure why . . . the numerals on his jersey are the wrong color, at least according to the majority of color images I've found on the web.

So, when a press photo of Layne showed up on eBay a while back, I jumped at the chance to improve upon my first version. The initial result, Bobby Layne version 2.0, is in the center above. I spent a Saturday afternoon working on cleaning up and colorizing the press photo, and working it into my '55 design. Everything looked fine on the computer screen, but after I had printed out the front, I began to have second thoughts.

Do you see the problem? In the size to which I cropped the photo, Layne's "package" seems to just jump off the card at the viewer. In the case of Bobby Layne, one of the hardest-living NFL players or his era, that's probably not an altogether out of synch image. Layne is one of the persons whom I quote most often. He once said that it was his life's ambition to run out of breath and money at the same time. Nonetheless, I decided that since I hadn't yet cut and pasted the image into actual cards, I'd take another stab at it.

The result is the third card in the stack shown here, Bobby Layne version 3.0. That one I can live with.

My 1955-style Mark Harmon gets a remake

Not long after I created my first 1955 Topps All-American style custom card of Peyton Manning in 2003, I decided that my long-term goal would be to equal Topps' output and create an "Update" set of 100 cards.

My intention was to make cards in that classic format for players who either hadn't made the original Topps cut in 1955, or who weren't yet playing college ball then (in many cases, the players on my cards hadn't been born yet in 1955).

In the early days of my project I actually wondered whether or not I'd be able to find 100 suitable subjects. That fear soon dissipated as my to-do list grew and grew. Today I have completed 122 cards in the '55 AA style and have my sights set on many more.

Actually, my "Second Series" is not yet complete. I'm holding card #152 for Randy Moss. I have some nice pictures of Moss in his Marshall playing days, but am holding off on doing the card until he retires.

This is all by way of explaining that some of my earlier efforts, in an attempt to fill out my checklist, weren't always of the highest quality. I was so concerned with getting to 100 cards that I sometimes worked with substandard photos. The result was, naturally, cards of which I'm not particularly proud.

One such was my first attempt at a Mark Harmon card. Harmon is, of course, best known to most for his years as the star of NCIS on CBS since 2003. But he was also UCLA's starting quarterback in the early 1970s. Harmon's father, Tom, appeared in the original 1955 Topps All-American set as Michigan's Heisman Trophy winning halfback of the late-1930s.

A look at my All-American Update checklist reveals several current and former TV and movie stars who played college football; it's a recurring theme of my collection. If I had not already made a Mark Harmon card, though, it would be quite far down my list of cards to create. I've just never had a fan connnection with him and, in fact, have never watched more than a couple of minutes of any NCIS episode.

Nevertheless, since I did make a Mark Harmon card, and since it did turn out to be less than my best work. I've been on the lookout for a better photo with which the rework the card. At this point, I don't even remember where I got the photo that appears on my original version. It's blurry and you can't really tell who it is under that helmet.

Thus, I was quite happy to find, while browsing around the internet a few weeks ago, a much more suitable photo of Harmon as a Bruin. As it is a press photo, it required colorizing, but that isn't usually much of a challenge.

I think you'll agree that the new version of my Mark Harmon card is a significant upgrade from the original.

Roman Gabriel added to my '55-style set

I've finally added a Roman Gabriel card to my checklist of 1955-style All-American football cards. But it wasn't easy.

I've always had Gabriel on my mental to-do list for the project, but had never run across a useable college photo. The Rams were always among my Top 5 favorite NFL teams in the 1950s and early 1960s, and when Gabriel finally got off the bench and became a starter, he became a player of more than moderate interest to me.

Maybe it was because he was the NFL's Joe Namath before there was a Joe Namath. He was literally tall, dark and handsome (he was once described as the "world's biggest Filipino) and his long hair made him stand out from the establishment quarterbacks like Johnny Unitas and Bart Starr, with their crewcuts. To a rebellious teen-ager (at least as rebellious as you could be in the mid-Sixties when you're white, middle class and living in a small Wisconsin city) who hadn't yet been brainwashed to hate pro football as a metaphor for The War, Gabriel was a player whose career I followed for a time.

I thought I'd struck paydirt in my card quest when I discovered Gabriel was included in the photo spread for Playboy's All-American team in the magazine's annual Pigskin Preview issue in 1961. I bought a copy on eBay for six or eight bucks, but when I got the magazine in hand, my hopes were dimmed considerably.

Creating a custom card from a magazine photo is always dicey. I knew from the preview I'd seen on line that Gabriel's image in the group photo was going to be small. It also turned out to be a bit fuzzy upon enlargement and the color printing was somewhat out of register. I diddled the image for a couple of hours last weekend, then plopped it onto the card's background. I didn't like the result (shown at left).

Another hour searching the internet for a suitable image didn't turn up anything useful; everything was either too small or too low-res. Fortunately, the search turned up an image of the cover of the 1961 NCAA record book, with an action pose of Gabriel.

An eBay browse offered my choice from among a handful of copies. Most were priced in the $15-25 range, which is more than I like to pay for the materials I use. I spotted a copy that had some items clipped from the interior pages and my low-ball offer was quickly accepted.

I was able to colorize the black-and-white cover photo and achieve an acceptable result, the image shown here at top.

As is almost always the case, boiling down the copy for the back of the card to about 90 words was a challenge. Even though he never won an NCAA Championship or a Super Bowl, Gabriel had a great career and has led an exemplary life.

He was a three-sport star in high school and after sifting through college scholarship offers, elected to stay in his native state at North Carolina State. While he played freshman basketball and varsity baseball (a slugging first baseman, he once hit three home runs in a game), eventually he came to focus on football.

Even though the Wolfpack was mediocre during his three seasons as quarteback (11-18-1 from 1959-61), he caught the pro scouts' eye. He was both All-American and Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year in 1960 and 1961, and was academic All-American in 1960. He completed 285 of 506 passes in his collegiate career, for 2,951 yards. He threw for 20 touchdowns and ran for 15. During his days at N.C. State, his fans developed a new Wolfpack fight song, "Throw, Gabriel, Throw."

The Oakland Raiders made Gabriel the No. 1 overall pick in the 1962 AFL draft, while the L.A. Rams chose him with the No. 2 pick in the NFL draft. Back in those heady days of NFL vs. AFL bidding wars, Gabriel's football fortune was assured. He signed with the Rams, but later said that's because while he was being "baby sat" in a hotel room by the Rams' Elroy Hirsch, a phone call from the AFL with a $100,000 offer was intercepted by Hirsch, who being mistaken for Gabriel's agent, assured the upstart league that Gabriel was firm in his desire to play in the NFL.

Gabriel was among the firsy of the "big man" quarterbacks in the NFL, at 6'4" and 235 lbs. He had an incredibly powerful arm and took the Rams to two NFL Championship games. He was a four-time Pro Bowl selection and was league MVP in 1969. Plagued by knee and shoulder injuries, he went to the Philadelphia Eagles in 1973, when he was named Comeback Player of the Year, and retired after the 1977 season.

As a starting quarterback in Los Angeles, and given his physique and dark good looks, it was natural that Hollywood came calling. He played an unnamed prison guard in the 1968 LSD film trip Skidoo, and had his biggest role as John Wayne's adopted Indian son Blue Boy in the 1969 Western, The Undefeated, which also included in the cast teammate Merlin Olsen. He had a number of television appearances, including as a headhunter on Gilligan's Island, and also appeared in the Raymond Burr series Perry Mason and Ironsides.

Gabriel did some assistant coaching in the USFL with the Boston Breakers and Arizona Wranglers, and in the World League of American Football in 1991-92 was head coach of the 0-10 Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks.

Though slowed by a stroke in recent years, Gabriel has devoted enormous time and energy since his football days to raising money for charities in and around North Carolina. I'm glad I was finally able to add him to my checklist of '55-style college custom cards.

"Road show" turns up 1950s record set

Last Sunday I was part of the appraisers' panel for a "road show" type of event in conjunction with the Iola Historical Society's summer fund raising day.

Iola, being the home of what was once the world's premier publishing company for collectors and hobbyists, has many resident experts in virtually every collectible area. The historical society offers an appraisal service where for $3 the general public can have experts give a verbal evaluation of their attic treasures.

I've been involved with this for the past three years; working, naturally, at the sports cards and memorabilia table. The event never draws a really big crowd, and at least at the sports table, we've never seen anything really valuable, but it is a fun way to spend an afternoon and to catch up with former colleagues (I share the sports table each year with SCD editor T.S. O'Connell) and to meet some interesting people.

I had a nice conversation, for instance, with an elderly gent who brought by a small picture frame with a pair of ticket stubs from the 1938 University of Wisconsin football season. The tickets were from games with Marquette (back whe n that Milwaukee school had a football program) and Pittsburgh. The tickets have a great art deco look and the price of 25 cents for a seat at a Badger game was a real blast from the past.

The old guy was in high school when he attended those games and has been to at least one Wisconsin game every year since. He had no interest in selling the tickets but was interested in their value, and even more interested in talking about 70 years of college football. My ballpark guesstimate was $50 apiece.

Our first appraisal for the day is presented here. A middle-aged fellow brought in a quartet of baseball instructional records.The value of such records within the cards/memorabilia hobby is usually in the quality and condition of the picture sleeves, rather than in the records themselves.

Over the years when working for the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards and elsewhere in the hobby, I'd seen several issues of instructional records from the 1950s through the 1970s. This particular grouping was not one with which I was familiar.

The records are 6" diameter, pressed in red plastic with rather plain paper labels. The small central spindle hole identifies them as 33-1/3 or 78 rpm. Presumably the content of the record consists of the player providing playing tips for his position.

The front of the picture sleeves displays great top-to-cap artwork of the players in action poses against a bright pastel colored background. Black-and-white backs are truly ugly, with crude drawings. Columbia records is identified in a couple of places on the sleeves and records as the maker.

When I viewed the player selection, I thought these might have been a Wheaties premium, because the four players represented were all included in several early 1950s Wheaties promotional items. The records' owner said he did not remember where he had gotten the records, and that they may have been some sort of cereal mail-in premium.

Since neither T.S., nor I . . . or even the event's record expert . . . had seen these before, we weren't able to provide any definitive answers, but I promised the owner I'd do some poking around the internet and get back to him. On the basis of what similar records sell for, I told him I thought the set of four -- Yogi Berra, Bob Feller, Ralph Kiner and Phil Rizzuto -- in the rather nice condition in which they were preserved, should be worth about $200.

The records were numbered PV-800 through PV-803, so I postulated that four pieces might comprise the complete issue, though if they were a Wheaties promotion, it is possible other regulars from the Wheaties line-up such as Stan Musial, George Kell or even Ted Williams or Jackie Robinson, might have been issued.

It turned out that finding information on the records was easy once I got to a computer. The records were actually included in a new products article in the June 2, 1952, issue of Time magazine. I was correct in that Berra, Feller, Kiner and Rizzuto represent the complete set, but there was no mention of any connection with Wheaties or any other sponsor. The article mentioned that the "unbreakable" records retailed for 34 cents apiece.

A little bit of digging on eBay turned up current or recent sales of each of the records, except for Berra. In a condition in which the picture sleeves were generally in about VG condition, as opposed to the EX or so condition of the set that I had viewed, the records had sold for $20-40 apiece.

Given that Berra would be the highest priced among the group, I'm confident my $200 appraisal for the set of four in that condition was fairly accurate. If there had been a Wheaties connection and identification on the records, I think he value would be 25% higher.

I shared my findings with the records' owner, and now I've shared them with you.

.

Joe Guyon, Part II, the pro years

As promised in my June 28 posting, I’m here to wrap up the story of Joe Guyon, with a recap of his career as a professional football and baseball player in the 1920s. If you haven’t read the first part, I’ll wait here while you get caught up.

Guyon left college in 1919, at the age of 26 (eligibility standards were different then), accepting Jim Thorpe’s invitation to join the Canton Bulldogs, a professional football powerhouse in the Ohio League, which was a direct ancestor of today’s NFL.

With a 9-0-1 record, Canton won the 1919 league championship. In 1920, Canton became a charter member of the American Professional Football Association, which became the National Football League in 1922.

In 1920, Guyon, Thorpe and the Bulldogs finished eighth, at 7-4. Unfortunately, stats for the NFL’s early seasons are not available, so it is impossible to quantify Guyon’s performance or make valid comparisons to other pioneering pro stars. We do know, however, that he is credited that season with a 95-yard punt.

Guyon remained paired with Thorpe in four more NFL backfields between 1921 and 1924. They played with the Cleveland Indians in 1921, the Oorang Indians (a traveling team of Native Americans sponsored by a championship dog breeder) in 1922-1923 and the Rock Island Independents in 1924. Surprisingly, those teams had a combined NFL record of 12-23-2, with only one winning season, a 5-2-2 record at Rockford. The two were also close off the field, with Guyon serving as best man at Thorpe’s wedding.

Some sources indicate Guyon also played with the APFA Washington Senators and the independent Union Quakers of Philadelphia in 1921, though those affiliations are not mentioned in Guyon’s official NFL Hall of Fame biography.

Thorpe and Guyon’s football paths diverged in 1925, Thorpe remaining at Rock Island with Guyon moving on to the Kansas City Cowboys in 1925, suffering another losing (2-5-1) season.

If he played pro football at all in 1926, Guyon played for independent teams. In 1927, in their third year in the NFL, the New York Giants signed Guyon. Playing guard tackle, blocking back and tailback and doing the punting, Guyon helped the Giants to an 11-1-1 record and the NFL Championship. “I did everything except sell programs,” Guyon said.

Guyon’s engagement with the championship Giants was his last in the NFL. Though not yet 35, it was reported that a baseball injury prevented his return to pro football. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1966.

Prior to joining the Canton football team in 1919, Guyon was reported by The Sporting News to have been playing independent baseball in Minnesota and North Dakota. He was given a trial by the New York (baseball) Giants late in the 1919 season, but failed to make the club and, though he played minor league ball for 12 seasons, never played an inning of major league ball.

Late in 1919, Guyon signed his first pro contract with the Atlanta Crackers of the then-Class A Southern Association. The Sporting News’ Atlanta correspondent, who wrote under the by-line of Lynch, lauded what he called the surprise move by team owner Charley Frank to acquire “Georgia’s star football and baseball player.” Lynch wrote, “Although it has been known locally that the popular college player would sign with some professional team for the 1920 drive, it was believed here the offers of several major league clubs, known to have been made to him, would prove so successful that efforts of local magnates to secure his services would prove futile.”
Guyon traveled a bit during the 1920 season. He book ended the season with Atlanta. Early in the year he was put on waivers and claimed by Little Rock. He was joined on the Travelers, who were also a Southern Association team, by Native American players William Wano and Moses Yellow Horse. In July, Guyon was put on waivers by Little Rock and Atlanta reclaimed him.

Guyon initially refused to report back to Atlanta and played for a time with Winder in a Georgia outlaw league. By the end of the season he was back in Atlanta. The SABR Minor Leagues Data Base shows Guyon also found time to play a handful of game in 1920 with Augusta, of the Class C South Atlantic League. Overall, Guyon’s batting average for 1920 was just .233 with one home run.

For the off-season, Guyon joined the Georgia Tech football coaching staff, reportedly commuting each weekend to professional engagements with Canton.

Guyon spent the 1921-1923 season in Atlanta’s outfield. He hit .309, and once the lively ball made its way to the Southern Association, his home run output jumped to 11 in 1922 and 10 in 1923. He had never previously hit more than one home run in any season.

Speed was Guyon’s principal weapon. He stole more than 200 bases in his minor league career, including 45 with Atlanta in 1921. Four times he scored more than 100 runs.

It was back to Little Rock for Guyon in 1924, where he hit .346. He spent the 1925-28 seasons with Louisville, batting a nifty .350 and helping the Colonels to American Association championships in 1926 and 1927.

He played only 25 games for Louisville in 1928, injuring his knee when he ran into an outfield fence in May. That ended his hopes of making the major leagues, as well as his pro football career.
From 1928-1931, Guyon was head baseball coach for the Clemson Tigers, with a combined 42-36-3 record.

In 1931, Guyon returned to professional baseball at the age of 38 as a playing-manager for the Anderson/Spartanburg Electrics of the Class D Palmetto League, batting .315. He jumped a couple of classifications in 1932, managing Asheville of the Piedmont League (Class B). He hit .364 that season in 66 games.

In the off-seasons, Guyon coached high school football at St. Xavier in Louisville from 1931-33, with a 16-7-2 record. Guyon’s final engagement in pro ball was as playing-manager of the Fieldale Towlers in the Bi-State League, a Class D circuit in Virginia and North Carolina. At the age of 43 he was still able to hit .265 in 33 games.

Overall in 12 minor league seasons, Guyon hit .329.

Following his playing days, Guyon lived for a time in Harrah, Okla., and from 1954-1962 in Flint, Mich., where he was a bank guard. A fellow Georgia Tech alum who knew Joe Guyon after his playing days, Joseph P. Byrd III, said of Guyon, “Though a terror on the football field, off the field Joe was a gentleman, light-hearted, bright, animated and witty.” He returned to Louisville in 1968 where he lived out his days, dying there a day after his 79th birthday.

Joe Guyon, finally out from Jim Thorpe's shadow

The latest addition to my series of 1955 Topps-style All-American college football cards is Joe Guyon, who starred at both Carlisle and Georgia Tech in the 1910s. For many years I'd had an interest in Guyon because, besides being a collegeiate gridiron star and an NFL Hall of Famer, Guyon also had a very successful minor league baseball career.

Georgia Tech didn't have any players in the original 1955 Topps All-American set, which I thought was a shame, since I'm sure the creative types at Topps could have worked up a great logo based on the team's unofficial nickname of the "Ramblin' Wreck." I've done my best to come up with something appropriate.

There is so much more to Joe Guyon's story that I can fit into 90 words on the back of his card, so I'm going to take a couple of days to present it here.

Because he spent his early collegiate career and his entire professional career in the shadow of Jim Thorpe, the name and fame of Joe Guyon are little known to today’s fans and collectors.

Like Thorpe, Guyon was a two-sport star who parlayed awesome athletic abilities into a life away from the White Earth Indian reservation near Brainerd, Minn., where he was born O-Gee-Chidah (sometimes translated as “Big Brave”) into the Ojibwa (Chippewa) tribe on Nov. 26, 1892. His English name was Joseph Napoleon Guyon. Also like Jim Thorpe, Joe Guyon was never saddled with what would today be considered the offensive nickname of "Chief," that was ubiquitously applied to virtually every Indian athlete in his era. A sportswriter or two, with a nod toward Mark's Twain's villain in Tom Sawyer, tried to make "Indian Joe" stick on Guyon, but it never really caught on.


He began his collegiate career under coach Pop Warner at the Carlisle (Pa.) Industrial Indian School in 1912. At 5’ 10” amd 195 lbs., he was a crushing blocker as a tackle for his teammate of Jim Thorpe. The team went 12-1-1. When Thorpe left the school, Guyon took over for him at halfback for the 1913 season. Carlisle was 11-2-1 that season, and both Walter Camp (Collier’s magazine) and the International News Service named Guyon a second-team All-American. Guyon also ran track at Carlisle; the school had no baseball team at that time.

From 1914-1916, Guyon attended Keewatin Academy, a private boys’ school that split its term (and sports seasons) seasonally between Prarie du Chien, Wis., and Ponce Park, Fla. Guyon spent his time at Keewatin bolstering his grades to make himself a better candidate for the major universities.

While on his way to visit a North Carolina school that had offered him a scholarship, Guyon stopped in Atlanta where his older brother Charles, himself a football star at the Haskell Institute and Carlisle, was an assistant under football coach John Heisman at Georgia Tech.


Guyon decided to matriculate at Tech. He became part of Heisman’s “Dream Team Backfield,” and when he wasn’t carrying the ball himself, he was clearing the way for others. Ralph McGill, Atlanta sportswriter, said of Guyon, “They could follow that big fellow and run to glory because he cleared the way, and I mean he cleared it!”

Another writer said, “Survivors of the teams Tech played in those days still shudder to recall the multiple impacts when Guyon blocked or tackled them, and he could punt over 60 yards consistently, place-kick from midfield and pass with the best.”


Georgia Tech went 9-0 in 1917, outscoring its opponents 491-17. In an 83-0 defeat of Vanderbilt,

Guyon ran for 344 yards in just a dozen carries. Later that season, against Carlisle, Guyon played only the first quarter as his old school was humiliated 98-0. Georgia Tech was named national champions in 1917 and Guyon was honored as halfback on two of the major All-American teams of the day.

With a 6-1 record, Georgia Tech won the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship in 1918 and Guyon was named a tackle on Frank Menke’s first syndicated All-American team.


Even after Guyon was nearly 20 years removed from the collegiate football scene, McGill wrote in 1935, “There is no doubt in my mind that Joe Guyon is the greatest football player the South ever saw.”

Joe Guyon was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1971.


(We’ll pick up Joe Guyon’s story with his pro football and baseball careers next time.)

Koufax gets two "new" rookie cards

As I mentioned in my last posting, I found the circa 1957 photo of Sandy Koufax in action on the Ebbets Field mount so compelling that I couldn't stop with making just one custom card from it.

A hometown Brooklyn boy, Koufax had his "real" rookie card with the Brooklyn-based Topps gum company in 1955. He did not appear in that year's Bowman baseball set.

I've remedied that by creating a hybrid of a Topps photo and a Bowman format. Actually, I did it twice. The 1955 Bowman "Color TV" set has been one of my favorite baseball card issues of all time since the day my brother came home from the neighborhood grocery store with fifty cents worth of nickel packs and began sorting them on the living room rug, proudly announcing that he had "more than half a hundred" of the newly releasedcards. For some reason "half a hundred" seemd to me at the time like so much greater a quantity than "50."

My first 1955 Bowman-style custom card was a George Crowe piece I featured in this space some months back. That card uses the mahogany tv cabinet. When the thought of doing a '55B Koufax popped into my head, I knew immediately I wanted to use the white oak cabinet that appeared on many of the early series in 1955 Bowman.

Unfortunately, my meager holdings of 1955 Bowmans do not contain any of the lighter wood framed cards, so I had to go on the internet and buy one. Before doing so, I paged through a library of images of 1955 Bowman to find an oak cabinet card that had the right photo background on which to place the Koufax photo.

I knew I wanted to find a card that showed a lot of the Shibe Park background in which the vast majority of the players had been photographed for that set. I found the perfect "host" card in #15, Boston Red Sox pitcher Frank Sullivan. Not only does the Sullivan card have the oak cabinet and a lot of stadium background, but the player's picture at center takes up very little space and could be easily airbrushed away.

I found myself in a quandry, however, as I studied the card of Cardinals' pitcher Brooks Lawrence. I've always liked the Lawrence card because the photo was taken on a nice sunny day, and the bright blue sky is nearly unmatched through the rest of the set. While the Lawrence card has the darker wood tv cabinet, it was no great chore to remove the photo portion of the card and put it into the oak furniture of the Sullivan card.

You'll notice I used a more close-up version of the Koufax photo on the Lawrence-derived card, which I think helps provide some distinction between my two "new" Koufax rookies. Both cards share the same back.

As with all of my custom cards shared on this blog, you are perfectly welcome to pick off the images (I usually present them in fairly high resolution) and paste together your own card. 

A 1957 Topps Sandy Koufax alt

One of the best (at least for us old-guy card collectors) player photos to come out of the Topps Vault series of internet auctions caught my eye and provided the inspiration for not one, but a pair of, Sandy Koufax custom card creations. (The photo also caught the eye of some serious Koufax collector specialists and Brooklyn Dodgers team collectors, and it was bid up to $1,275.)

The image was an original Topps color transparency described as dating from 1957. Indeed, the then-21-year-old Koufax is pictured at the top of his wind-up with some of Ebbets Field's outfield signs in the background.

I'm not going to second-guess the designers at Topps in 1957, who chose to go with a great close-up portrait for the Koufax card in their short-printed Fourth Series. But to me, the photo from the Topps vault just seemed like it would have also made a very nice card . . . so I made one.

I haven't often, in my several years of custom card making, tried to improve on an actual card from Topps, Bowman, etc. It's my belief that the graphic artists who created those originals so many decades ago, working with what today is viewed as ancient technology -- a roll of rubylith and an Xacto knife -- do not deserve to have their legacy usurped by me and my computer graphics tools.

But the image of the '57-style card that could be created from this newly re-discovered Koufax photo was just too vivid in my mind's eye, so I made it a reality.

As my custom card projects go, this alternative '57 Koufax was pretty easy. I just had to match the name/position/team typography from 1957 and lay it over the photo. On back, I just made a couple of subtle changes so that the card can't be confused with a genuine 1957 Topps issue.

This Koufax alt card represents my first work in the 1957 Topps set, which is surprising since that issue remains one of my all-time favorite basecall card sets. I have several other '57s on my to-do list, including a Stan Musial, who didn't appear on a Topps card until 1958.

Keep you eye on this space to see the other custom card that derived from this great old Topps photo of Sandy Koufax.

Down-sized Babe Ruth premium questioned

A reader recently inquired about what he believes may be an as-yet unreported third size of a Babe Ruth premium issued circa 1930 by the Chicago Herald and Examiner daily newspaper.

The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards recognizes two sizes of the premium, measuring approximately 8-1/2" x 11" or 5" x 7". The card in question measures 2-3/16" in width at top; 2-1/8" wide at bottom. Height is 2-15/16" at left; just less than that at right.

I've had a chance to examine the card. Maybe I've been away from the counterfeit detection game too long. I no longer have a microscope and black lights on my desk top. My eyes aren't what they used to be. And maybe the newsest generation of fakes and fakers has passed me by with my antiquated expertise and examination techniques. I'm just not able to publicly make a call of good or bad on this item.

I like the look of the stock on which it is printed. The paper is about the thickness of photographic print paper and has a convincing aged look, both front and back. What I initially thought was a "reproduced" crease at top-left is an actual paper crease, clearly visible on the blank back.

The quality of the printing gives me pause, however. It's been many years since I had the larger-format premium in hand, so I don't recall its specs. I believe it was probably offset printed in the rotogravure offset process used to produce the Sunday magazine section in many newspapers of that era. I don't specifically recall ever examining the 5" x 7" version, so I can't comment on its production values.

This down-sized version also appears to have been printed in rotogravure four-color process, though I am unsure why the black ink portions have such a glossy, embossed, "wet" look.

Perhaps moreso than the physcial characteristics of the cardin question, I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around its original intended purpose. The 8-1/2" x 11" size was common to premiums in that era. It was a nice display item that might induce a baseball fan to buy the Sunday H and E off the newsstand, rather than the Trib or one of the other contemporary papers.

Frankly, I don't know why a 5x7 version would have been issued and am even more perplexed by this nominally 2-1/8" x 3" version. What could have been the intended use for which it was printed?

I'd guess that an examination of back issues of the Herald and Examiner for the few days before the Babe Ruth premium was actually issued might answer some of those questions, but we don't even know what year the premium was issued. Giving a bit more thought to that topic, perhaps the arbitrary designation of 1930 is too early. Perhaps it was issued in conjunction with the 1932 World Series, when the Yankees swept the Cubs. Or maybe there is a connection to the first All-Star Game at Comiskey Park in 1933.

This is not an idle inquiry; there are serious dollars at stake. The larger versions of the premium picture carry a book value of $1,300 in NM in the latest SCBC. Because this smaller version is more "card-like" in nature, and thus more appealing to many collectors, it is not out of the question that its value could be even higer than its big brothers, but at least one of the major certification services has declined to rule on its authenticity.

Naturally, anything you, the readers, can come up with in terms of facts, conjecture or opinions about this card would be most welcome.

'55 Topps Koufax reprint errors

In the course of doing my research for a custom card project (coming soon to this blog!) I had occasion to reference the back of the 1955 Sandy Koufax reprint that Topps made for its 1995 Brooklyn Dodgers Archives issue.

I had never noticed it before, but the reprint displays several errors in the biographical data section at left on back.

Most prominently, the reprint misspells Koufax's first name, adding a "D" to make "SANDFORD".

The reprint also flip-flopped Koufax's throwing and batting orientations, presenting them as "Bats: Left" and "Throws: Right". In actuality, as printed on the back of the original card, Koufax was a southpaw who batted righty.

Finally, the reprint subtracted 60 years from Koufax's age, giving his birthdate as 1995, instead of the correct 1935.

I don't know whether Topps made similar mistakes on other cards in the Dodgers Archives set. I don't believe they corrected the errors on the Koufax rookie reprint, or we'd have heard about it by now.