Crossing Bleier off my "wish list"

In my Sept. 1 posting about how I got into creating custom 1955 Topps All-American style football cards, I published a "wish list" of former college players that I would like to include in my on-going update set.

Quick to respon was Indiana collector Harold Dieter, who sent me a card of Rocky Bleier in his Notre Dame uniform. The card originated in one of the early 1990s Collegiate Collection team sets of former Fighting Irisher players.

The portrait on the card was just what I needed to create my Rocky Bleier tribute card, and just a couple of weeks later, it was finished and I was sending a couple of the cards off to Harold. Now I'm sharing it with you.

Why Rocky Bleier? Primarily because he is virtually a local boy. Bleier was born and raised in Appleton, Wis., about 45 minutes east of my locale here in Iola. He is probably the most famous and accomplished football player native to Wisconsin; certainly in this part of the state.

Bleier attended St. Francis Xavier High School in Appleton. On the varisty football team from 1961-1963, his teams were 9-0 each season. He was All-State running back three times and All-Conference as a linebacker one season and defensive back another. In three seasons he amassed 2,985 rushing yards, 55 touchdowns and a 9.4 yard average. His uniform #23 is the only one retired by the Hawks, which named their football field for him.

While many schools felt that Bleier was too small (5'10", 175 lbs.) for big-time college football, Notre Dame's new coach Ara Parseghian was willing to give him a chance. and Bleier became a major contributor at starting halfback to the Irish's National Championship team in 1966. He was named captain of the 1967 team.

The Pittsburgh Steelers chose Bleier in the 1968 NFL draft, but not until the 16th round. He was the 417th player selected. Bleier had a decent rookie season with the Steelers, playing in 10 games. Then he was drafted again -- into the U.S. Army at the height of the Vietname War.

On Aug. 20, 1969, Bleier's unit was ambushed and he was shot in the left thigh. As he lay wounded, a grenade landed nearby and tore up his right foot. He earned the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his combat service.

While rehabilitating form his injuries, Steelers' owner Art Rooney sent Bleier encouraging messages and told him they would support his return to the NFL, even as his doctors told him that was an unlikely outcome.

Bleier spent the 1970 season on Pittsburgh's injured reserve list, and most of 1971 on the taxi squad, though he was activated for six games without seeing any action.

In 1972, with his old college quarterback Terry Hanratty leading the Steelers offense, Bleier began to work himself into an integral part of the dynasty that won Super Bowl titles in 1974-1975 and 1978-1979. His best season was 1976 when he rushed for 1,036 yards and his combined 1,330 yards rushing and receiving were tops on the team.

Bleier retired after the 1980 season. In December of that year, his book Fighting Back was adapted for an ABC-TV Movie of the Week starring Robert Urich. (I saw a note while googling around that Urich played college football at Florida State . . . I'll have to look into that.)

So in a nutshell, local boy makes good and triumphs over adversity. That's why I had Rocky Bleier on my wish list for a custom card. 

I received a couple of other offers to help on my wish list that seem like they will pan out. Watch this space for update.

1951 Fischers Bread label data sought

As mentioned in a previous posting, veteran collector Larry Serota is a frequent contributor both to this column and to the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.

For years he has unselfishly shared his research and "finds" with the rest of the hobby, so when he recently asked for our help on one of his collecting projects, it was a pleasure to accomodate him.

Larry is deep into what the hiobby used to call "oddball" issues . . . collectibles that are outside the norm of bubblegum cards.

One of his on-going quests is the completion of a master set of 1951 Fischer's Bread labels. Back in the early days of sliced bread, before plastic bags and twist ties, loaves were sold in colorful waxed paper wrappers that were sealed on the ends by a square of gummed paper. These end labels were often decorated with images of baseball and football players, Hollywood celebrities, Disney characters, etc., giving them a collectible aspect that it was hoped would entice children to ask their mom to buy one brand over another.

Because these labels were theoretically capable of surviving numerous openings and closing over the life of a loaf, they are ususally found today (if they are found at all) in wretched condition. Heavy multiple creases, tears, even missing pieces are the rule, rather than exception. And even at that, the early 1950s baseball bread end labels readily sell for $100+ for even "common" players.

One of these regional issues is known within the hobby as Fischer's Bread labels, though that name does not appear anywhere on the 2-3/4" square (except for the bobbed corners) labels. The labels have a red panel at bottom with "Bread for Energy" and they carry a B.E.B. copyright.

Thirty-two players are known in the Fischer's Bread label set, but there are 48 pieces in a master set. The labels are found with backgrounds of either red, blue or yellow, but 16 of the players can be found with two different colored backgrounds.

Larry's research shows there are eight players found only on yellow backgrounds, and four each that are exclusively red or blue. Eight other players can be found on both red and blue backgrounds, and four each are known in both red and yellow or blue and yellow types.

He has identified five players each in the red and blue subsets that are candidates to also exist in yellow. He believes only one player from each list will be found in yellow. From among the red-background labels, he's looking to ascertain which of these players also exists in yellow: Harry Brecheen, Billy Goodman, Cass Michaels, Andy Pafklo or Roy Smalley. The roster of blue-background labels that should yield one yellow version is: Ned Garver, Willie Jones, Eddie Joost, Roy Sievers and Earlky Wynn.

If you can help complete this master checklist by sending a scan of one of those elusive yellow-background labels, please contact me at scbcguy@yahoo.com.

1951 Cubs regional reported

Regular contributor Larry Serota has tipped us off to a previously uncataloged regional issue of 1951 Chicago Cubs promotional player pictures.

I'm frequently amazed at the breadth and depth of Larry's vintage "card" interests. He obviously spends untold hours scouring eBay for the type of collectibles that veteran collectors used to label as "oddball."

Even more important, he is willing to share what he finds with the rest of the hobby by presenting the information to the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.

Larry's latest report is of a trio of Cubs player pictures issued by a Chicago area clothing emporium. This type of premium was often issued in conjunction with player autograph appearances at retail outlets in a by-gone era when a ballplayer was willing to spend a couple of hours meeting and greeting the fans in exchange for a new suit.

The premium pictures are 5-1/2" x 8," printed in black-and-white on semi-glossy thin cardboard stock. Backs have year-by-year stats. Each photo has a facsimile autograph. Printed in the wide bottom border is "COMPLIMENTS OF HIRSCH CLOTHING STORES".

The players known to date are: Hank Sauer, Johnny Schmitz and Bob Schultz. Whether this trio represents the entirety of the issue, or there are players yet to be reported, is not known.

Check back in a couple of days for your chance to help Larry with one of his collecting endeavors with another scarce 1951 baseball issue.

1981 FBI Discs set discovered

While my official responsibilites with the Standard Catalog of Baseball cards only cover the vintage (pre-1981) major league and minor league sections, I'm always willing (time permitting) to work with collectors to enhance the more modern listings.

Thus I hope to see added to the 2012 edition a newly reported regional disc set: 1981 FBI Discs.

Among the many types of 2-7/8" discs issued in the 1970s and 1980s, the currently listed 1982 FBI Discs are probably the rarest. These were issued in pairs on the bottoms of cardboard six-pack contains of Bantam (and possibly other brands) soft drinks in Canada. Because of their appearance on the bottom of a box, most discs suffer from scuffing on the front, or show indentations from the soda.

The 1982 discs are so rare that we recently were informed that the catalog's checklist of 30 players is incomplete by at least two. A panel of the 1982 discs has recently been offered at an outrageous price on eBay. That panel adds Ron Guidry and Richie Zisk to the known 1982 checklist.

Now we learn that there was also a 1981 FBI issue. The Reggie Jackson from that set is pictured here. Like the 1982 discs, the earlier issue has black-and-white player portraits at center that have had the cap logos airbrushed away. A green-and-orange FBI logo is at top, with the player’s name at bottom.

Unlike the 1982 FBI issue, there is no copyright date on the 1981 discs. The MLB Players Association logo flanks the portrait at left, with the players position (in English and French) at right, along with his team’s city. The team nickname apparently appears only on those discs that have more than one team in a city. The unnumbered discs are checklisted here in alphabetical order. This list is certainly incomplete and the set probably comprises at least 30 discs.
NM/M

Rick Bosetti 25.00
Warren Cromartie 25.00
Steve Garvey 35.00
Reggie Jackson 75.00
Nolan Ryan 400.00

If you can add any names to the list, please send a scan for verification to my e-mail address at scbcguy@yahoo.com.

1964 Mantle "no period." Variation or not?

A reader -- whose name and contact information I am embarrassed to admit I lost in my jumble of email accounts -- has inquired about a possible variation on the regular-issue (#50) 1964 Topps Mickey Mantle card.

On his card, authenticated by PSA (though not as a variation), there is no period after the "Y" in the team name at the upper-right on back. Typically, of course, a period appears there.

To try to get a feel for this anomaly, I contacted a major dealer in vintage cards, who has since asked that remove his name and findings, which were pretty much in line with my personal opinion of the status of the card in question. I believe the period disappeared as a result of over-inking of the red-orange background and/or deterioration of the printing plate. It is likely that many cards exist with not only this period, but also other punctuation is differing stages of being all there or not there at all. This result is typical of reverse (white on color) printing in that era.

For the present, I'm not going to add this to the checklist for 1964 Topps in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, but I'm certainly willing to listen to pro-inclusion arguments, and will revisit the subject if it ever appears like the "no period" card is finding acceptance in the marketplace.

$500 for a pocket calculator?

Like many of you, the Great Recession hit me pretty hard. I had fully intended to be retired about this time (or at least as retired as I'll ever get), but when one-third of my retirement funds vanished into thin air, I had to replot my course.

I suspect I'm also like a lot of you in wondering whether we have seen the last or the worst of the recent financial problems. Now I understand why my parents, who lived through the Great Depression, remained frugal and fiscally wary to the end of their days; and they had the advantage of a defined pension plan, probably never (directly) owning a share of stock or a stake in a mutual fund.

Historians still debate how long the Depression would have lingered if a wartime economy had not intervened, but I'll bet that in the late 1930s and through the 1940s, most Americans would have rather slogged through another decade of Depression than the uncertainties of a world war.

In the midst of my personal pity party, it occurred to me that technology might be what pulls the world out of this latest downturn.

That thought struck when I was at the local dollar store and picked up a pocket calculator for $1. No batteries required. You'd have to be my age to realize what a bargain that seems.

As it happened, I was going through a copy of the September, 1973, Playboy a couple of days later and discovered empirical evidence of just how much of a bargain today's dollar calculators are.

As I've mentioned in this space in the past, I have a nostalgic interest in Playboy magazines of the 1950s-early 1970s, especially those issues that have the annual Pigskin Preview article on college football. Among the ads for Japanese import autos and checkered, bell-bottomed, Sansabelt slacks, and the nekkid pictures of Victoria Principal, there was an article reviewing the latest in then hi-tech calculators.

I was struck by the price of those models that seem upon casual perusal to be comparable to the calculator I had just bought for a buck. They were priced at about $100. A quick google search of the historical value of the dollar tells me that 100 of 1973's dollars is the equivalent of about $508 today, given the average annual 4.49% inflation rate.

That suggests to me that if left unfettered by big government, mankind's natural inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit may yet get us out of the current economic troubles through the application of technological breakthroughs in virtually every field of endeavor.

1967-style Red Sox Rockers custom card

My list of pending custom card projects is likely to outlive me. I've got dozens of baseball and football player photos squirrel away in files both physical and electronic. My custom card output has slowed some in the past year or two, probably averaging something less than one new card a month. And that doesn't include my "rehabilitation" projects, remaking some of my earlier cards from a time when my skills weren't as far along as they are now, or in cases where clearly superior player photos have become available.

But while my to-do list is seemingly perpetual, I can never seem to strictly adhere to it. Something frequently comes along that strikes a chord and I drop everything else to take it on.

That was the case a month six weeks back when I found on eBay a very sharp photo of the Red Sox outfield of 1967 -- Carl Yastrzemski, Reggie Smith and Tony Conigliaro. The image of that photo on a late-Sixties style multi-player feature card (a term I invented for a Baseball Cards magazine article in the early '80s) leapt to mind and I was hooked.

I was the successdul bidder on the photo and while I waited for it to arrive, I did my homework. I quickly determined that the format for the card should be 1967. That's the year Tony C. was beaned and he didn't play at all in 1968. The trio was back in the Fenway outfield for 1969, but I decided to go with the '67 style.

Putting the back together was a challenge because of the space limitations and the necessity of covering three players. As always, I printed out stats from the SABR data base, then tried to copy the spirit of Topps writers of that era, who were writing for 10-year old boys, not adult card collectors.

My original version of the card front had the "RED SOX ROCKERS" in red type, matching that on the Boston uniforms in the photos. When he viewed the prototype on my computer, SCD editor T.S. O'Connell, himself a baseball artist, pointed out the card title seemed hard to read, with the black-outlined red letters largely coming out from the navy blue sleeves.

My next choice was to go with a light blue, picked out of the sky in the photo, and that seems to have been a great improvement. Maybe the red letters caused the eye to strain too much towards the title in an effort to read it, but to me, the blue letters at bottom, along with the blue sky above, seem to better frame the players and allow the eye to be drawn to that central element. I hope you agree.

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.

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