'62 Mars Attacks, I bet Sister Claire still has mine

I spent most of my elementary school years at St. Mary's in Nutley, NJ. The church and parish are still there but the school building I spent so many hours in and around is now a privately run school for young people with special needs.

I've mentioned the place here previously and showed the ramp which was our card flipping backdrop. Lots of good memories and stories for sure. My friends and I  collected more than just baseball and football cards.

Over the last few years, I've set out to collect (for the second time ¯\_㋡_/¯ ) the non-sports cardboard that so fascinated us. I've succeeded in finishing the Batman and Civil War News sets. I'm working sloooowly through the more-complicated-than-it-needs-to-be '67 Soupy Sales set. And I'm really within range of finishing this beauty, the original 1962 Bubbles (aka Topps) Mars Attacks set of 55 cards.

Cards were not necessarily against the rules at St. Mary's. You just needed to keep them out of sight during instructional time. LOL Fat chance. I had my share of cards taken up by the lay teachers and, particularly, by the nuns, the Sisters of (not much) Charity. Baseball and football cards were returned to us (usually) at the end of the week with a warning that the next time we wouldn't be so lucky. But getting nailed shuffling through your stack of Civil War News or (gasp) Mars Attacks cards meant you could kiss those babies adios. If you were living right (and had a teacher that wasn't wearing a habit), you knew they were gonna get trashed. If you were caught by a nun...well you got to watch her tear them up and then had to endure a shot from her yardstick or long, wooden pointer across the arm.

But I'm getting too wordy here. My set chase began back near the first of the year. My goal was to put together a presentable set without going nuts on price. And that isn't easy with the Mars Attacks set. These things get pricy quick. I've picked up 45 of the 55. I have been able to gather most of them in the $14-$18 range. I've done that by ignoring the fact that many are off-center. But now the available cheapies are picked over. I get lucky from time to time but the last few I've obtained were in the $20 range with a few closer to $25.

Supposedly Topps pulled these from production due to a harsh response from the public (read 'parents') over the graphic and violent images. That may or may not be true. What is true is that the cards were graphic and violent. Right up our alley!

Card #21 is reputed to be the hardest to find other than card #1. It certainly is priced that way. Here's something else I found interesting..Topps, according to the Heritage Auction site, used the 'Bubbles, Inc.' 'imprint' when they were publishing a set that they thought would be viewed as controversial. I'd wondered about that and had never heard that explanation of it. And it makes sense.

The backs of the cards contain the narrative for the artwork on the front. You'll be relieved to note that, according to the back of card #21, the young lady in the clutches of the Matian was able to escape.

The project was conceived by two giants of the card industry at the time, Woody Gelman and Len Brown. The illustrations were drawn by Wally Wood and Bob Powell and were then hand-painted by the great Norm Saunders. That same crew, more or less, was also responsible for the Civil War News set which was completed in 1961. Everything you could ever want to know about the Mars Attacks set, and more, can be found here at the Old Sports Card site.

These are two scans of the same card. I bought it with the notation of  'stained' from the seller. When I pulled it from the toploader to scan I noticed that the 'stain' was some gum or candy residue which flaked right off without a trace. When it comes to building this thing I'll take whatever break comes my way.

BTW.. you can use the title of #5 here to make up your own joke.

My needs list is over on the right-hand column. I'm figuring that card #1 will be the final card to hit the binder. Then again, considering that I've had cards from this set sitting at COMC for months without any indication if they will ever be shipped, card #1 may be yellow and brittle before I finish loading pages.

I'll save my 'Why does COMC send me multiple emails every day about their auctions if they are too locked down to ship?' rant for another day.

And speaking of Mars Attacks... Kickstarter, along with Topps, is issuing another crowdfunded Mars Attacks set next summer.  I'm a backer and the previews look fantastic. I figure its 50/50 on whether that set is in my hands before the '62s I have at COMC.

In the Nick of time

Just last week I was bemoaning the fact that I hadn't added anything to my PCs in quite some time. Then came a completely unexpected and very neat surprise.

These custom cards came to me from Nick Vossbrink who is both a Twitter friend and blogger of many interests, particularly baseball and photography.

These are great, yes? I really like the team-oriented colors and terrific photos Nick used on these. That 'ump view' shot of BP throwing a Spring Training pitch is amazing. It just came up someplace recently, Twitter maybe? I'm sure Nick has the story. It's got a 'Life Magazine: Baseball Is Back!' vibe to it.

And here is Brooks...

That's a classic photo from the 1970 Series.

Nick gave these the full career stat-back treatment which I appreciate even if I have come to need a magnifying glass on my desk in my old age.

And then there was this:

1981-style Oddjob! Toshiyuki 'Harold' Sakata was the Hawaiian-born actor who played one of the most memorable roles in any Bond movie as Goldfinger's henchman/manservant. Sakata packed a lot of living into his 62 years. He was an Olympic weight-lifter (Silver medal winner for the USA in 1948), pro wrestler and actor.

Pretty darn clever of Nick to use the '81 card design that features hats as Oddjob's bowler was his 'calling card' as it were. This makes a really fun addition to my actor/actress binder. If you aren't a Bond aficionado check out this clip which sums up Oddjob's role pretty well.

Many thanks to Nick for these fun customs.

Collection Status...Part Two

Last week I posted about my progress with my primary set projects. I'll take a little time today to focus on the rest of what I'm working on these days. Public Service Announcement: Slabbed cards in this post will be freed as long as I have a binder page that will fix properly. (That's a PSA..get it? PSA? The grading company. Hell, never mind)

Player Collections, etc.  Nothing new on the Billy Pierce front. I add some oddball items from time to time but the 'White Whales', like his '59 Bazooka card, remain beyond the range of my harpoon.  I do grab vintage of him from cheap card boxes at shows. I just think I hate seeing him in quarter boxes, so undignified! LOL

My PC/Orioles Stars binder has fallen into disrepair lately. That'll get re-done in the next few months. Meanwhile, I discover fun stuff like this Dennis Martinez card by reading other blogs (thanks, Fuji!). It was pretty cheap on eBay and it just showed up.

Likewise, my University of Houston alum cards were put up in a box when I turned my hobby room into a nursery! After all these years I will re-binder them and fill in some gaps, next year probably.

Small/Oddball Sets I recently came across a box I had put away that continued a load of stuff like small Orioles sets, TCMA team sets, 1980s era Kmart and similar 33-card boxed sets, etc, etc. Some of those need to be bindered, many will just get broken up into teams and sent to fellow bloggers. Some will get burned in the fire pit.

Houston Aeros Over the last few years I've pulled this one on and off the 'back burner' of my collecting. Aeros games were fun, cheap entertainment back in the day. My friends and I made it to lots of them, particularly at the old Sam Houston Coliseum in downtown Houston.

A few years ago I decided to collect their team sets from the few companies making WHA cards back then. I already owned the Howe cards so finding the rest wasn't hard. I have all the base Aeros cards from the various O-Pee-Chee sets. I have a couple of the Quaker Oats cards and a few of the 75/76 team issued set. Those latter two sets are very tough.

I also add a few 'retro' set Aeros when I come across them cheap, mostly Gordie Howe cards on which he is shown with Houston.

More hockey...once I finish going through my boxes of stuff and sort out the Rangers I have I may try to finish some team sets.

Non-Sports Cards This covers so much that I will break it down, mostly for my benefit. I think I need to re-assess where I'm going with these. 😏

Batman I have the three original Topps 1966 Batman sets, red, blue and black bat. There are dozens of modern Batman sets and I have a handful. I made it a point to buy the boxed sets that were associated with the first Batman movies. I am nearing 50 Batman sketch cards. Every few months I'll remember to check for cheap sketch cards on eBay. I added this one for a few bucks some time back. I have no current 'goals' when it comes to my Batman collecting.

More or less related to this... my Civil War News set has long been finished. Once in a while I find an upgrade. Topps continues to add to the Mars Attacks franchise. I have several of the reprint/update/continuation sets from this franchise. 


Presidents I finished off a couple of JFK sets in the past two years and am currently working on the '64 Topps LBJ/Goldwater set. I have exactly half of the 66 cards and little hope of finishing it anytime soon. They don't pop up often for sale/auction online.

My vintage Topps/Bowman presidents cards are in a small box, unorganized. That needs fixing. I also have several oddball sets of Presidents/famous historical figures which need bindering. My hodgepodge of oddball & modern presidential cards (Panini, European etc) also needs sorting.

Entertainment My pursuit of the Topps Soupy Sales set has been very slow. Once I found that each card has different possible backs (Topps flipped the sheets in the middle of the press run apparently) I backed off. I need to figure out what I have and what I need which is tough with the cards being unnumbered and the backs being unrelated to the fronts. Ugh.

I continue to add actress and actor cards, from the old tobacco sets thru 'fan' sets of the 50s and 60s. I bought a small lot of Exhibit cards of actresses recently. There is no goal or checklist for this stuff. I just pick up what I like when I find it at reasonable prices.

I came across some boxes of Stranger Things 1 & 2 packs really cheap. My wife and I really enjoy that series, so I bought the boxes. They are under my desk, waiting for a rainy day. 

Baltimore Colts Collection  I still lack some Fleer Super Bowl cards but those are not a priority. I do come across oddball and retro cards here and there.

I have a lot of new postcards and publications but I'm sticking mainly to cards with this post. Those will have to wait for another day.

This Post Goes To Eleven

This Is Spinal Tap is one of my favorite movies. If you are unfamiliar with it (and I can't imagine anyone who would be) it a 'mockumentary' chronicling the North American tour of an awful '80s British rock band. It's freaking genius.

It was the brainchild of Rob Reiner who directed it and plays film director Marty DiBergi. This 36 card set was produced for the 2000 re-release of the movie. I bought this at a card show several years ago for a few dollars and stuck it in a box that I recently pulled from my closet.

This is card #1, the 'cover' card

The cards were still in the shrink-wrap. The glossy finish caused them to stick together somewhat, the same way some of the early glossy baseball sets did.

One of, if not THE iconic scene from the movie is the one where Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel is interviewed for the 'documentary' by Marty (Reiner). He shows off his guitar collection and the Marshall amp that "goes to 11". One louder indeed.

This card highlights that scene.

Here are some random cards from the set. Some of the pictures they used were a bit murky and not all were cropped well but the set is a lot of fun for a Spinal Tap fan.

Added comedy break...Spinal Tap getting set for their first post-Nigel gig, at a theme park.

June Chadwick was perfectly cast as the ultimate rock band girlfriend.

Clip of their on-stage 'showmanship'.

Fred Willard has a memorable role and in this clip he discusses it.

This is Spinal Tap is highly recommended!

Space Cards, G-Men ...and other weirdness

My Net54 grab-bag purchase and latest hotel show scrounging yielded some stuff I had no business adding to my collection. But it's some fun stuff and post-worthy (I guess).

These first two cards are from the 1957/58 Topps Space Card set. I had never seen these. A little digging turned up the fact that these cards, 88 in all, were recycled for another set, Target: Moon somewhat later. The dates of issue for some of these non-sport sets are sometimes murky. The Topps Archives blog does a great job of researching this sort of thing. These were also re-issued in England through Topps' agreement with A&BC. Some were also included in repacks and promotional tie-ins as late as 1968.

The artwork is uncredited as far as I can tell. I saw a Topps mainstay, Norm Saunders, credited for these on at least one reference page but checking Mr. Saunders' website finds no mention of them.

This is a fun one..astronauts playing checkers in space. Well, OK then.

Just for grins, I checked to see what putting this set together would cost, or if it was readily available already completed. Lots of listings for singles on eBay at prices from about $4 and up. One complete set, from a British seller, for over $450. I think I'll just enjoy these two in my non-sports binder.

And speaking of tough to put together...check out these next two cards. They are from the 1936 G-Men and Heroes of the Law set.

Gum, Inc. (aka Bowman) issued these as a skip-numbered (and probably unfinished) set of 168 cards. The card numbers run into the 400s. Some background and the known checklist is available here.

I blew these up so the backs could be read here. That's about as much text as I've ever seen on a card.

I'd guess that these were done to jump on the popularity of the Dick Tracy comic strip which premiered in the early 1930s. This page has a link to a slideshow of the whole set.

You can get a better idea of the size of these with this scan I did of one next to a standard Topps card.

Haven't had enough of guys with guns? My dealer and friend Daryll had a stack of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. cards in his non-sports box. I picked out a couple of Robert Vaughn examples. This is the best of the bunch.

I really enjoyed that show back in the day. But it wasn't my favorite...that honor goes to Combat!  I've posted a few of these cards previously but I think these two capture the main characters best:

Rick Jason as Lt. Gil Hanley...

..and Vic Morrow as Sgt. Chip Saunders.

Like everything else we enjoyed, my friends and I had debates on which character was 'the best' in the show. I was a Hanley devotee. Sadly, both actors died tragically.

I'm still not done with the oddballs. But I'll mix in a few baseball posts so both regular readers don't completely abandon ship. 

One Bat, Two Bat, Red Bat, Blue Bat!

So who sez I don't post-baseball stuff? Check this out:

Yup, Robin has a nasty high, hard inside fastball. That's card #27A of the 1966 Topps Batman Puzzle-back series, aka, the 'red bat' set. I posted about my black bat set some time ago. Topps was all over the Batman mania that prevailed in the mid-1960s, in 1966 specifically. They released five Batman sets that year, six if you count the two different styles of 'blue bat' set card backs. More on that in a bit.

Batman collectors tend to migrate to the black bat set as the best of the cartoon-style bunch. I can't disagree. It has the sharpest artwork and the backs are really nice. But Topps piled on with these two similar sets. I recently completed them both. 

Before moving on I must address the condition of these. Like all the vintage non-sports sets I have, I am perfectly happy to pick them up in less than pristine condition. It would be neat to have gem mint Batman sets but that's not a priority with me. What I have come to learn as being 'collector grade' is just fine. Cards in one piece, creases not too obvious, decent corners, minimal extraneous marks....I'm good to go. 

Both the red and blue sets are made up of 44 cards. They also both come with backs that form puzzles of various characters involved in Batman's world. Both sets are also primarily made up of horizontal cards with a mix of vertical ones.  

Here's the back of the card up top:

If you can read the small print on that card back you can see that the puzzle was formed with six cards. The villains were all six-piece puzzles while out heroes got bigger, 10 piece puzzles.

Here are a few more of my favorite cards from the set. Hard to beat mixing in the Statue of Liberty!
 

I guess Gotham City has a 'Broadway', too.

Why would a ghost wear glasses, other than to better visualize him in a cartoon?

And a shapely damsel in distress.

And here is a look at the Joker puzzle when it's put together:

The blue bat set was the third of these cartoon art sets of 1966. It's also the weakest in terms of artwork. But no Batman art is bad Batman art. It was numbered as 1B thru 44B. 

Again with the puzzle backs.

Robin gets to work his arm again in this set.

Here is the variation mentioned above. This blue bat series was also issued with these backs:

They are called the blue cowl backs and I much prefer them to the puzzles. I picked up a couple of these cowl backs on COMC just as 'type cards' and I'm fighting the urge to chase the whole thing.

The two different back from the #9B card, side-by-side:

I mentioned that Topps had six Batman issues in 1966. Here are cards (not mine) from the other two. These used photos from the TV show and the movie. The Batman Laffs set had TV pics...

The Batman/Riddler set was based on the movie.

The three cartoon-style sets, black, red and blue, were re-issued in 1989 as a 'deluxe' set of 143 cards. I was unaware of that until recently and mine is now in route. I really haven't given much consideration to the two 'photo front' sets. I was a Batman comic guy and the show, while entertaining, wasn't something I really went out of my way to watch after the novelty wore off.

That doesn't mean those two sets don't appeal to my 'completist' side.