After The Fox

I've stated more than once several dozen times over the years that I am not particularly 'condition conscious' when it comes to my vintage sets. But I do have preferences and, well, limits. And when you assemble sets using a good sized 'starter' lot you always end up with a certain percentage of stinkers in the mix.

Issues with corners, centering, creases, marks, and paper loss might or might not cause me to decide that I need a better copy of a card. I don't really have a formula that tells me 'this card goes over the line' or anything like that. It's just a gut feeling. This is where I usually paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said in the Court's 1964 ruling on an obscenity case.. 'I can't define it... but I know it when I see it'.

That's how it is for me when it comes to upgrading or no upgrading. Condition X doesn't automatically trigger my eBay finger, nor necessarily does Condition X + Condition Y. But when I'm flipping through a binder I'll pull a card that just looks 'wrong' in the slot.


I got the ball rolling on my 1960 build a few years ago with a nice 200+ card purchase from eBay and was pretty pleased with the results. Oh, there were a few dogs in the mix, but overall I had no complaints. I received this '60 Nellie Fox All-Star as part of the lot. He managed to stay in his slot for about three or four years until the terrible back of the card got to be too much for me. Observe...


The Old:

That's pretty brutal. But the back side is where the damage was so I managed to ignore it, at least until recently. When I pulled it to look at it in hand I noticed (again) that the back was so damaged that the cardboard loss goes almost all the way to the front of it. Not good. So a few weeks ago I found a better one. These are not very costly and I really, really like the design so I don't know what took me so long to get a better one....

The New:

That's much better. Off-center? Sure. But I'll take it. I have two or three commons that probably could stand a bump but they will do for now.

More from the 1961 Topps MVP Subset

I thought I'd toss these up since I had them scanned. They span a decade of  MVP winners and include a bunch of well known players. Nellie Fox, for example. There he is with the chaw. He won his MVP while leading the White Sox to the '59 AL crown.

Al Rosen missed out on the Triple Crown in 1953 when he finished barely behind Mickey Vernon of the Nats for the AL batting title. But he was a unanimous choice for MVP.

The Pirates' Dick Groat won the batting title, a World Series ring and the MVP Award in 1960. In 1963, his first year with the Cardinals, he finished second in the voting to Sandy Koufax.

Ernie Banks won back-to-back MVPs. I'm sure he would have traded them both for a shot at a World Series. This card came at a discount because some kid was kind enough to add the name of Ernie's team below his name.

Hank Sauer is the 'least celebrated' player in the group. His winning year, 1952, saw him lead the league in HR and RBIs. Robin Roberts, pitching for a fourth place Phillies club, won 28 games, had an ERA of 2.52 and a WHIP of 1.021 and finished second in the voting. I might have voted for him.

I think I did pretty well

Please allow me to pat myself on the back (and after the debacle of my last post I need it). What you see above is the photo of the cards contained in the eBay listing that fell into my lap for $21 over the weekend.

Nine 1960 Topps cards that cost me $2 and change apiece with shipping factored in. Even when you take into account that I had the Nellie Fox card already that's quite a deal. Now the Gibson and Mathews cards have creases, and the Colavito isn't great but the others more than make up for it. The Whitey Ford card is in at least excellent condition and the Robin Roberts and Nellie Fox cards are close. The Fox will be an upgrade over the one in my binder now.

I'm saving the actual scans for my 1960 Topps blog but I was so pleased with the cards when they arrived I wanted to show them off.

And yet another two 1958 All Star cards

This Nellie Fox has a creased corner which doesn't show up on the front in this scan to the same extent it does when viewed in person. OTOH the horizontal lines that cross the front in the scan are barely perceptible in person. I need to figure out my scanner's properties I think.

Anyway the back of the card, as on the rest of these terrific '58 All Stars, tells us that Nellie terrorized the Tigers in 1957. He went 40 for 93, a .430 clip. In addition he scored 22 runs, had 7 doubles, two homers and drove in 13 runs. Those are the best numbers he had against any one club. Of the 21 times he collected three or more hits in a game that year, eight of them came against the Tigers. He did it four times between August 9th and 17th against them. Then on August 18th he hit one of his five 1957 homers. I bet they got sick of him.

I like the Skowron card a lot because it's not a portrait. And because Moose has his trademark 'squint' on. And because he looks like John C. Riley. And because I just liked the Moose in general. Ignore the ragged left edge and soft corners, it's got a nice shine to it. Looks like my Orioles kept Moose in check fairly well in 1957. The three extra base hits they allowed him are the fewest of any club that year.

So this wraps up my '58 AS card eBay haul of last month. I'm pretty sure I'm going to try and collect the rest of this subset. May not be anytime real soon but I'll get to it.