Dipping (Stubbing?) My Toe In

With a bit of prodding from my better half and a few others I'm going to give this blogging thing a go again. That's not entirely accurate since I've done some posting on my 1958 Topps blog. But as far as this place goes, well, I've been gone a couple of months.

I'd like to tell you I feel different than I did the day I signed off but I'd be lying. I also would like to tell you that I have a ton of new stuff to show off but that wouldn't be true either. I've picked up very little other than 58's and I haven't been to a card show in months. I'll remedy the latter issue when TriStar hits Houston next month. 

By far the best thing I've added recently was this 1952 Star Cal Billy Pierce decal. These babies are just great vintage oddball items. I picked this one up for around $30 I think which is a good price though certainly not a 'steal'. 

This is my second Pierce Star Cal. Almost three years ago I nabbed the Pierce/Nellie Fox version. Those with two players are known as 'small' while the single player decals are referred to as 'large'. When I blogged that Pierce/Fox version I dug up a lot of info on these things so if you are interested you should check that post out. 

Somehow I didn't even have this large Pierce on my checklist so I never really thought to search for it. It just popped up on my general eBay Billy Pierce search one night and I grabbed it. Frankly I'd have paid a good bit more had I needed to. The prices for these are all over the map, by the way. If you are a Yankee fan there is a nice Rizzuto/Coleman without the envelope on eBay right now for under $20. That would be a much better way to spend $20 than on a Chromilated-Refactorized-Diecut Gary Sanchez card. 

My Pierce is in about the same shape you find the majority of these things in. They are kind of fragile and through the years many have yellowed a bit and the envelopes had a tendency to tear. 

Here is mine in the envelope as I received it. Looked to me that it had never been opened and it about killed my soul to remove it but I was careful. The glue barely needed any persuading to allow the flap to open. 

Here is the back of the envelope complete with suggestions on where to apply them. I can just see myself  using the 'Frame on wall with colored tape' idea in our living room. But really I was thinking about how cool this Pierce would have looked on the back window of my Dad's '56 Studebaker Golden Hawk back in the day.

The back of the decal itself:

It actually scanned better than I thought it would.

The envelope without the decal reveals the checklist. The numbering system corresponds to the different teams. 70A thru 70F are Yankees. the 71 sequence decals are Red Sox, etc. The 'small' (two player) versions pick up the numbering. Interestingly there are a few quirks to the checklist vs. the actual decals. There is a Jerry Staley decal listed as 81G on some checklists but it is not on the envelope list. The small Ned Garver (which is two pics of him) is listed in the same numbering sequence as the decals containing Philadelphia Athletics. I don't know the full story on these obviously.

And finally here is my Pierce/Fox version. It's actually the same size as the 'large' Pierce but the scan runs off the column when I use the XL setting. 

So that's it. I'm back, more or less. We'll just have to see how things go. I won't have a lot of stuff to post here until I get to a show probably. BTW...I need only the Mickey Mantle card to complete my '58 Topps set. If you have an extra send it my way will ya?