A Koufax and a Jensen by Bob Lemke

I've mentioned before that if you don't regularly read Bob Lemke's Blog you are missing out. He has a long history in the hobby having worked as editor and publisher of the sportscards and memorabilia periodicals and books at Krause Publications as the editor of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. 

Bob's posts mix sports history, vintage cards and his own 'homebrew' cards. His cards are very high quality and calling them 'homebrew' is probably a disservice. Bob doesn't cut any corners and the attention to detail is pretty impressive. 

After deciding not to make the cards available to collectors for awhile Bob has (thankfully) reversed course recently and put them up for sale once again. "Cards that never were" may not be your thing but I enjoy Bob's work and have made a couple of purchases. The latest one brought me the '57 Topps-style Koufax seen above. 

He used a great photo of Sandy with the Ebbets Field scoreboard in the background. He discusses that card some in this blog entry. I have previously purchased two other of his Koufax cards and posted them on this blog.

Another card I obtained in my recent purchase was this 1960 Topps-style Jackie Jensen. The more I researched Jensen for my '59 Topps Blog the more interesting he became to me and I started a small PC. I am happy to add this one. I love the 1960 Topps set as it was the first set I actively collected pack by pack. 

And the 1960 card back design (and color scheme) is my absolute favorite. The cards with the 'Season's Highlights' fascinated me back in the day. Bob's '60 Jensen is a fabulous card.

Hard to imagine a guy retiring just a season removed from an MVP Award and back-to-back RBI titles. But that was Jensen. He attempted a comeback in 1961 and he had a Topps card that year but he was not in the 1960 set. Bob explores Jensen's career and his new card in these posts. 

I picked up another card in this batch but I'll save that for another post.