Campy, 1956 Topps Style

EDIT: I'm not sure what happened to this post. It reverted back to draft form and much of it was lost. Anyway I am posting it again after rewriting what I recall of what was here before. Blogger hasn't been kind to me lately.

In my neverending quest to acquire cards I don't really need but really want I bought this 1956 Topps Roy Campanella when it was put up for sale by a Net54 member. I previously had no other career era Campy's and, as with Jackie Robinson, I wanted to rectify that. The closest was my 1959 Symbol of Courage card that Topps included in their high numbers that year.

I don't have to tell any card hobbyists how wonderful the 1956 Topps set is. It's almost universally beloved as one of the iconic vintage card designs. Campy's card is a great example.  The front, in addition to the portrait, shows Campy slinding into home. Odds are the opposing catcher is Yogi Berra. But a Getty Image search of the two Hall of Famers didn't turn up anything that might be a match as the original. It could also be the New York Giants catcher Ray Katt who wore #8 in the 50s. Then again we all know that Topps' artists sometimes snagged a photo and painted it as  someone else. (Sliding Willie Mays sez 'Hi!')

Some Campy notes:

• He made the All Star team in 8 of his 10 seasons in the majors. He missed out in his first and last years.
• He began playing for the Baltimore Elite Giants in 1939 as a 15 year old and was the regular catcher at 16.
• He was taken to Glen Cove Hospital on Lomg Island following his accident in January of 1958. My sister had been born there just a month eariler. My brothers were born at GCH in '59 and '61. 

 Here is his NY Times obituary.

1979 TCMA Stars of the 50s

This 291 (293 with variations) card set is one of two large sets produced by TCMA in the late 70s following the lawsuit by Topps arising from the SSPC set of 1975/76. That action effectively killed TCMA's efforts at using current players and pushed them towards making sets of retired major leaguers and a myriad of minor league sets. 

Actually TCMA produced dozens of sets around that time and later but this one, 'Stars of the Fifties' and it's companion, 'Stars of the Sixties' are by far the biggest. I picked up both of them recently. They are a lot of fun and I'm really looking forward to putting them in pages. The quality of the photos varies greatly but you can't help but appreciate the simple beauty of them. 

I've scanned a bunch and will post these few and some random thoughts.

Every card in the set features a posed photo. The Ted Kluszewski card is typical. there are lots of spring training shots sprinkled throughout the set. Big Klu's card is one of the better ones, bright and clear.

I don't recall seeing a card with a pic of a player tying his shoe as Robin Roberts is doing here. You wonder if the photographer just happened to come upon him down on one knee, called his name and took the picture or had him pose like this.

Elston Howard is a fake catching pose somewhere in Florida. Probably Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg. i need to get a dupe of this so I'll have one in my ever expanding Ellie Howard PC.

Some of the cards suffer from photos that seemed to be over-exposed. They are a bit washed out in appearance. Ernie Banks' card is one of those.

Bob Purkey wearing the ultimate spring training attire, a rubber windbreaker style jacket under a jersey.  Sweating off those winter pounds.

Harvey Haddix isn't looking sad because he lost a perfect game in the 13th. He's looking sad because he ALWAYS looked sad. 

Alvin Dark of the Giants. If you're getting the feeling that there are a lot of NY area players in this set you're not alone. I'll have to do a tally once I page this thing. It's a neat card isn't it?

Roberto Clemente....he always looks so damn regal doesn't he? Willie Mays is probably the best all-around player I've ever seen but I could make a pretty good case for Clemente as well.

This Billy Pierce shot has been used on at least a half dozen other oddballs. And usually it's much clearer.

In contrast to the Pierce card Sam Jethroe's card is cardboard art. 

Snider, Hodges, Campy, Furillo grace one of the few group photos. The other one I saw while flipping through the box was one of Dodger pitchers.

The Original Frank Thomas wearing a flocked Pirates helmet. MLB had brought back the matte finish helmets, can the flocked ones be far behind?

Even as a young player Spahnnie had that 'Spahn look'!

Roy Campanella looks like a high school kid here. I had to flip the card over to be sure it was him.

Willie's card is among the top five or so in the set as far as I'm concerned. Nice to see a photo that isn't overused. This reminds me of the pics in the old Sport magazines of the day.

Don Hoak in a classic baseball pose from the 50s. What a great card!

Leo Durocher hitting infield. I wonder how many infield grounders he hit during his lifetime?

Stan Lopata. Yes, he always crouched like that. He didn't always wear the shades but he did for this shot.

Sal Maglie. From 1950 thru 1952 he went 59-18 for the Giants with 46 complete games in 83 starts. He had a WHIP of 1.21 and an ERA of 2.83 That's impressive stuff. He's also one of the few guys who played for the three old school New York teams. He's also the answer to a tough trivia question: "Who was the losing pitcher in Don Larson's perfect game World Series win?"

Jimmy Piersall won two Gold Gloves. That's impressive given the quality of the outfielders during his time. Neat card, too.

Al Kaline, native son of Baltimore, looking about 18 here. That's Yankee Stadium.

Figured I'd throw out a peek at a card back. Vitals, blurb, lifetime stats.

Vic Power. One of the great names in the game during the 50s/60s.

Hal Smith  this is the Hal Smith who began his career with the Orioles and went on to play with the A's, Pirates, Colt 45s and Reds. It was his three run dinger in the bottom of the eighth of the 7th game of the 1960 Series that gave the Pirates a short-lived lead. An inning later Maz broke that tie and Hal Smith got a ring.

Walt Dropo had a rookie year to remember. It was 1950 and he made his only All Star tean, hit a career high 34 homers and drove in a league leading 144 runs. Yup, he was ROY.

Roger Maris. maybe it's just me but I can't remember a bunch of really cool Topps Maris cards. I like the 1961 MVP card for sure. This card of him as an Athletic is pretty sweet.

All in all it's really a fun set even with it's flaws. I received a box with what I hope is the 'Best of the Sixties' version yesterday. Can't wait to get a chance to dig into that one, too.

Shiny Things

At the last hotel card show I hardly bought anything for my collection (outside of the big ol' lot of '70 Topps). But I did do something I hadn't done there in a long time. I ventured around the meeting room scrounging through tables looking for 'stuff'. No specific goal, just 'stuff'. Normally I camp out at the promoter's table where he has some great cheap vintage or in the hallway where he sets up his dime and dollar boxes.

In a box of new and relatively new '25 cents or 5 for a buck' cards I found these two which caught my eye. They are 2004 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classic base cards. I've discovered that UD loved to make neat stuff using old photos that didn't show up in every other set, put a bunch of foil on them and then give the sets unwieldy names.

I don't have anything to say about these except that I found the checklist and the apparently numbered them using the players' first names in alphabetical order which is unusual. There are 161 of them including 71 which are given a FF notation that stands for Famous Firsts.

Here is a look at the back of the Campy card.

I might go find the Elston Howard card. I'm adding him to my list of player collections. More about that in another post.

1958 Customs (Phantoms?) from Bob Lemke

Bob Lemke writes one of my favorite blogs. He has some great stories from bygone days thru his access to old copies of The Sporting News. Plus he was a mover and shaker in the memorabilia news industry for many years. 

He also produces some terrific customs, both sports and non-sports. After a brief hiatus he is currently selling them again and I for one am glad. They are not cheap but if you buy a few at a time they cost about the same as a Topps Now card and are far more interesting than a card of the latest walkoff passed ball incident. 

When I decided to go after the 1958 set I knew I'd be checking out what Bob had available. I did the same for my 1959 and 1960 projects. Both of those binders have a page in the back that contains a few Lemke creations. 

For 1958 Bob now has seven customs (plus a variation). I recently picked up three of them. Roy Campanella never got to play with the 'Los Angeles' Dodgers as his sparkling career ended with his auto accident late in  January of 1958.  Bob's custom is a spot-on take on what a '58 Topps Campy might have looked like. 

Next is Bob's version of the '58 multi-player specials. He found a nice shot of Don Newcombe and Johnny Antonelli and used it in a way I'm surprised Topps didn't think of. 

When I looked at the checklist for the '58 set I saw that there was no card #145 and then remembered that it had originally been the spot where Ed Bouchee would have appeared. He was dropped from the set when his legal issues arose and he was suspended. Lemke fills the slot with a nice version of what the Bouchee card might have looked like. He has available both a yellow and black background. I picked the black since there are not as many black cards in the set as there are yellow. Bob was kind enough to also sent the yellow version as well. I have the yellow version at the bottom of this post.

Unlike the other Lemke customs I have or will pick up the Bouchee card will reside within the main binder pages as if it was an actual Topps card. I don't like having an empty slot on a page in a completed set. But to just 'skip' the spot would have thrown off my numbering and made my card-related OCD kick in to high gear. 

BTW...Bouchee was reinstated to MLB in the summer of 1958 and had cards in Topps sets again from 1959 through the end of his career in 1962 with the Mets.

The reverse of Bob's custom is a few shades 'brighter' than the original Topps cards but it's a great replication in all other ways so I'm happy to use it in that #145 slot. If it wasn't available I would have had to make my own lousy custom which in no way would have looked right.

There are four other Lemke '58s listed on his site. I'll snatch those up at some point along with the '59s and '60s that I missed the first time.

I'm still weighing my options as far as a '58 Topps blog goes. I'll figure something out.

Oh, and here is an image of Bob's yellow Ed Bouchee #145. 

More $$$ for cards!

In my last post I casually mentioned my new 'TV setup'. About a month ago I made to move to 'cutting the cord' as it's called. I'm not completely there yet since I still have a minimal cable account for reasons too convoluted to go into here. But I do most of my viewing thru my Amazon FireTV Box using the Sony Playstation Vue app, the Netflix app and a bunch of others. 

Bottom line is I'm paying about $60 less a month than I was with our top shelf  AT&T Uverse plan. And I actually have many more viewing options. I'm not really planning to spend the savings on hobby stuff but that would be fun!

I did take some extra cash to last weekend's hotel card show but the plan was to spend it on a bulk lot of 1958 Topps cards should I come across one. I'm about 90% sure that the '58 set will be my next project. I bought a handful but there were no bargain lots around so that project will wait a bit.

I rummaged through the cheap card boxes and came up with a few that were calling my name. The Frank Robinson at the top of the post is from TCMA's 1986 All Time Orioles set of 12. I love Frank Robinson cards, I love oddballs and TCMA stuff in particular. I wasn't familiar with these but I've since found the set for sale on eBay very cheap so I might need to pick it up. I've also come across a color version of at least one (Jim Palmer). I don't know the story on all that and I'm not really interested. 

Here is the reverse of the Robinson card. BTW...I saw references to the set with blue back printing being a reprint set.  A reprint of a TCMA set? I'm not even sure Larry Fritsch would try to pull that one off. 

A few other random things I brought home. 

1981 Topps Bob Griese. Did he steal those cheaters from Michael Caine?

I forgot to scan the back but it mentions that Griese coaches his kids' youth team. I guess that would be Brian Griese.

Next is a card of one of my UH friends, Otis Birdsong. That's an '86/'87 Fleer which was a cool and colorful set. Always nice to add a card of a Houston star. Particularly Bird who is such a great guy.

This next one is a Cooperstown from Panini showing Roy Campanella in his Baltimore Elite Giants uniform. Campy played with Baltimore from the age of 16 over parts of eight seasons.

Had that been Campy in a Dodgers uni I might not have grabbed it but you don't see many cards with him during his days in Baltimore. That's the old Orioles Park in the picture.

And I grabbed a nice copy of Topps' 1966 Jim Bouton card. I'm not even sure why I did. I don't particularly collect Bouton but I have enjoyed his books, saw him pitch numerous times as a kid and even played Little League against his young cousins in New Jersey.

Sure, he's a Yankee but most Yankee traditionalists hated him. Even the dealer I bought it from, a Yankee fan himself, had a smart remark about this card. LOL.

I'll post the '58s next time so everyone can tee off on them (and me for collecting them).

1961 Topps MVP Campy!

There are only 16 cards in the 1961 Topps MVP subset but oh, boy it's packed with star power. Here is one on my favorites. Roy Campanella had his career cut short due to the injuries he sustained in a car accident in January of 1959. He lived not far from where my family was living on Long Island in those days, on the north shore in Glen Cove.

How great a player was he? Well, he won three MVP awards over the course of just five seasons. Just for grins here is the list of the top NL MVP vote getters in 1955, the year Campy won his third trophy:

• 1    Roy Campanella                                               
• 2    Eddie Mathews                                                
• 3    Duke Snider                                      
• 4    Red Schoendienst                                          
• 5    Warren Spahn                  
• 6    Robin Roberts    
• 7    Ted Kluszewski                                                
• 8    Stan Musial                        
• 9    Carl Erskine
• 10  Carl Furillo 
• 11  Pee Wee Reese                                               
• 12  Jackie Robinson

And don't forget that Hank Aaron and Willie Mays were in the league as well. That's some serious competition. Lots of info on Roy Campanella out there. The more you dig the more interesting stories you find. Here is a snippet of Campy's bio on SABR's site:

Like most of the first generation of black players to cross the color line, Campanella took a steep pay cut to enter Organized Baseball and was forced to start at a level far below his ability. A top star in the Negro leagues, he found himself competing against a bunch of inexperienced kids, most of whom would never rise above Class A ball. Furthermore, he would be making only $185 a month for six months at Nashua rather than the $600 a month he’d been earning with the Baltimore Elite Giants.   

Campanella hit .290 and drove in 96 runs in 1946 to win the Eastern League MVP award. Early in the season, Nashua manager Walter Alston, who doubled as the club’s first baseman, asked Campy to take over the team for him if he ever got tossed out of a game. His reasoning was that Roy was older than most of the players and they respected and liked him. Sure enough, in a June contest Alston was ejected in the sixth inning and Campy became the first black man to manage in Organized Baseball. Moreover, his strategic move resulted in a comeback victory when he called on the hard-hitting Newcombe to pinch-hit and was rewarded with a clutch home run.

Roy’s experience in Nashua also changed his parents’ life. Fences around the Eastern League were virtually unreachable, and a local poultry farmer offered 100 baby chicks for every Nashua home run. At the end of the season, Campy collected 1,400 chicks as reward for his league-leading 14 circuit shots. He had them shipped to his father, who promptly began a farming business on the outskirts of Philadelphia.  

I'm down to just two cards from this subset on my want list, the Aaron and Yogi Berra cards. I keep bidding and losing but I'll get lucky at some point.

1953-1955 Louis Dormand postcard of Billy Pierce

Here is an item I didn't think I'd be able to add to my Billy Pierce collection. Louis Dormand was a photographer based in New York in the 40s and 50s. He worked in many areas but the one of most interest to baseball collectors are his postcards of players taken at Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field. Most of the cards in his baseball checklist are Yanks and Dodgers but there are a few other players included and Pierce is one of them. These cards were reportedly used by players to answer autograph requests. They were also sold at the stadiums.

The Dormands are an interesting item. Check out the current eBay listings. Prices are all over the map. They range from $5 to $10 for a Gil Hodges or a Johnny Sain to many hundreds for some of the others. Scarcity is certainly a factor. There was an 'attic stash' of Gil Hodges cards discovered some years back and thus his cards are very common. I own an Allie Reynolds Dormand (my father's favorite Yankee pitcher). I paid next to nothing for it at a show a few years back.

Billy Pierce's Dormand has been one of the pricier examples. I hadn't seen one for under $200. There is one on eBay at this moment with a $285 asking price. That's why when I got my email alert from eBay with a new listing of a Dormand Pierce for about ONE TENTH of that I jumped on it instantly.

And I couldn't be happier. These are beautiful items. Here is the back and below that I have a crop of the 'business' side of the back.

Here is the Pierce as it came to me and before I broke it out of it's plastic prison.

Most sources list 45 cards in the set including variations. But the 'skip-numbering' (no 131 or 137) makes me think there were probably others. there are also some un-numbered/blank backed variations. They might be the ones sold at the stadiums. That's pure speculation on my part.

1953-1955 Dormand Baseball Series Postcard Checklist

101 Phil Rizzuto
101 Phil Rizzuto (Jumbo 6 x 9)
102 Yogi Berra
103 Ed Lopat
104 Hank Bauer
105 Joe Collins (Patch)
105 Joe Collins (No Patch)
106 Ralph Houk
107 Bill Miller
108 Ray Scarborough
109 Allie Reynolds
110 Gil McDougald
110 Gil McDougald (Signature Variation)
111 Mickey Mantle (Batting Left)
111 Mickey Mantle (BL Jumbo 6 x 9)
111 Mickey Mantle (Bat on Shoulder)
111 Mickey Mantle (BS Jumbo 6 x 9)
112 Johnny Mize
113 Casey Stengel MG
114 Bobby Shantz
115 Whitey Ford
116 Johnny Sain (Pose Variation)
116 Johnny Sain
117 Jim McDonald
118 Gene Woodling
119 Charlie Silvera
120 Don Bollweg
121 Billy Pierce
122 Chico Carrasquel
123 Willie Miranda
124 Carl Erskine
125 Roy Campanella
126 Jerry Coleman
127 Pee Wee Reese
128 Carl Furillo
129 Gil Hodges
130 Billy Martin
132 Irv Noren
133 Enos Slaughter
134 Tom Gorman
135 Eddie Robinson
136 Frank Crosetti CO
138 Jim Konstanty
139 Elston Howard
140 Bill Skowron

If I were to chase another one it would be the Campanella. I have an online image but I have yet to see a listing for one. Campy and the other Dodgers in the checklist are shown posing at Yankee Stadium. The bunting hanging along the upper stands indicates the pictures were taken at a World Series. Since the Yankees and Bums played three times in the early 50s that would be the logical answer.