Civil War News Additions (and a subtraction)

I'm slowly adding to my '62 Topps Civil War News set. I've found that there is no middle ground with these either price or condition-wise. I've exhausted the supply of needed and affordable (under $2) examples on COMC. Now I'm doing a daily check on eBay. It's hard to find anything under $5 there.

These two come from an earlier eBay purchase and are in better shape than most of my other ones. That one up top is one of the nightmare-inducing examples that stuck in my memory from my elementary school days. A painting of soldiers impaled on abatis stakes tends to stay with a kid.

Here is the back. I bet I was disappointed that there wan't a description of the gruesome scene depicted on the front. Instead it discusses the reaction of CSA General John Bell Hood to the lost battle of Nashville in December of 1965. But. as has been documented, that story was made up by the Topps writers who did the 'News' on these cards. More on that in a bit.

#52 Friendly Enemies depicts wounded from both sides sharing a canteen after presumably fighting each other moments before.

The card's back references the post battle atmosphere of Chattanooga in September of 1863.

I was able to find a couple of nice examples of the faux Confederate currency that was inserted into the packs. They in 10 different denominations. Some serial number variations bring the total to 17 different. Once I'm done with collecting the cards I may try to nab a few more of these bills. This $100 note is the better of the two I have.

The title of the blog mentions a 'subtraction'. Here's why:

In my haste to scoop up all the cheap ones available on COMC I added this #58 Angel Of  Mercy to my cart. When the package arrived it stuck out from the rest of my purchased lot. The obvious difference was the size of the card. It was smaller than the rest and flipping it over the the pink/red is brighter as is the cardboard itself.

  

And then there was this:

I had no idea that these cards had been reprinted by Topps' 'kissing cousin' AB&C in England in 1965. I think of them as a football (soccer) card maker but they did loads of non-sports issues as well. Scroll down on this webpage for a list of AB&C card issues. 

I'd obviously misread (or not read) the card description and ended up with the British version of this creepy Clara Barton card. It isn't the first time I've 'mis-bought' something online. Won't be the last either. And it IS pretty creepy. Her bloddy and bandaged patient looks like something from those Friday The 13th films. Here are comparison views of the AB&C card and one of my Topps cards.

Reading the card backs and poking around the internet doing just the barest of research turned up the fact that the card backs are far from an accurate chronicle of the Civil War. I recently came across a 1998 interview done with Len Brown who was one of the Topps employees involved with making this set. It's very long and the page uses very small type but it's still worth looking at if you are interested in this set. It's a good read even if you just want some insight into how these old non-sports sets were done.

Late in the interview Brown is asked about the backs and how they were developed and here is that exchange:

{Paul} ....... By the way, who did the stories on the backs of the cards?
{Len} Uh-oh, I was afraid you were going to ask that. I slaved over the backs.... but what I am not proud of was that I misled lots of children to think that these were true events that took place during the war. Most of them were just fictional. We planned the pictures.... composed the scenes out of our imaginations..... after the paintings were done, I wrote a little story about the front of the cards---then I would look up a town or date that seemed appropriate and would try to publish a newspaper back as if it were a real event. I remember getting a letter from a schoolteacher years ago, thanking us for helping the children in her class to learn about the Civil War. Yet, sad to say, facts never got in the way of telling an interesting story.
{Paul} That's okay, Len. The stories were great. I enjoyed reading each of them -- true or not. Were there any stories that were factual? I remember a particular card; "The Silent Drum" was about a drummer boy who was killed. Or were they all made up?
{Len} There might have been a few accurate stories that were written up. I suspect "The Silent Drum" was fictional. We were just trying to tell an interesting story about the picture on the front. If I had to guess, I would say 80 to 85% of the stories were complete fiction pieces. The battles were based on fact, but the incidental details were really fiction.
{Paul} Well, the stories were good, factual or not. 

The origin of the Confederate currency inserts is also discussed:

{Paul} So is it an authentic copy, or just an artists conception of what the money looked like?
{Len} I don't believe they were 100% authentic. We purchased some antique confederate bills and reworked the designs a little bit. It was a combination of several elements. I think they came off looking pretty real because we stayed close to the original. In those days we were afraid of just "counterfeiting" the Confederate money, even though they were no longer considered real currency.

I'm lacking about 30 to complete the Civil War News set.  expect it to take me quite awhile to finish it off but having a project always makes this hobby fun.

More Civil War News Gruesomeness

Through a combination of purchases on eBay and COMC I've added some new cards to my Civil War News binder and upgraded a few others. I spent a few extra dollars to get a decent copy of #21 Painful Death. It's one of the more graphic cards in the set and one I remember as fascinating me as a kid. It's badly miscut but the card is otherwise very nice. Especially alongside some of the poorly conditioned ones that I already own.

The back mentions Stonewall Jackson's Virginia campaign without any specific tie-in to the artwork on the front.

There were definitely several different artistic styles within this set. The face belonging to the guy holding the flame here is seen on many other cards. 

Here is another card I remember well. I was fascinated by the Civil War era armored gun ship the Merrimac.

This new copy of The Battle Continues is a clear upgrade over my previous one:

New:

Old:

I have already posted my mistakenly bought AB&C copy of Angel Of Mercy. The Topps version is equally as creepy.

A few months ago I did some checking into Civil War troop train wrecks and determined that this is based on an event that happened somewhere else besides Chattanooga on the date listed. I can't find the webpage anymore though so my old man memory made be failing me. 

A couple more random cards from my stack of new additions.

The Angry Man is John Brown and he graces Card #1 in the set.

I also picked up the most expensive and elusive card, the checklist. I found a cheap one after a long search. It's not as nice an example as I had hoped to add to the binder but given what these run in good condition this one will have to do.

A Blogging Perk

What appears to be a routine 1957 Topps card of Cardinal righty Willard Schmidt actually means more to me than that. Ol' Willard has a card in the '59 Topps set and while researching his background for my '59 set blog I discovered that his great-nephew, Jim Schmidt, lived in Houston and was a fellow blogger. But his writing was much more serious than mine. Jim works as a chemist but is also an author with a deep interest in the area of Civil War medicine.

I reached out to Jim and he turned out to be a really good guy. He pointed me towards a couple of his blog posts that touched on his great-uncle. Jim lived in Houston at the time but has since moved to Kansas. I'm not a 'Civil War buff' in the usual sense of the term but I've always been interested in it and more particularly Abraham Lincoln. I have read his book on Galveston Texas' role in the Civil War (fascinating stuff) and some other things he has written. I have another of his books on a shelf in my reading queue.

I regret that I wasn't able to get to any of the forum/discussions that Jim was featured at in the Houston area before he moved. But through the magic of Facebook (this is FB's only redeeming value IMO) I've been able to keep in touch with him. One of these days I hope to get together with him and talk baseball, Willard Schmidt and the Civil War. I'll let Jim lead the discussion of medicine!

I'd been meaning to pick up the '57 Willard Schmidt card for quite some time but I didn't get around to it until last month. And while it's not as cool as the terrific '59 it's still a neat card with Schmidt in the classic Cardinals' gear at the Polo Grounds. And like his '59 card this one has a nice Topps cartoon on the reverse.

So not only do I have a budding 'Willard Schmidt collection', I also have a friend. Blogging can be a cool deal, yes?

Last Piece of the Civil War Puzzle

Time to put the Topps Civil War News set to bed with what is probably my last upgrade. I found a copy of card #44 on eBay last week for a decent price and it came in yesterday. It's far from pristine but it fits well with the condition of the rest of the cards in the binder.

It's also not the most graphic or well drawn of the bunch but it does have 'death' in the title so there's that. BTW...if you are scoring at home there are 14 cards of the 88 in this 1962 set that have 'death' in the title, three use the word 'deadly' and three more with 'doom'. 

And if you're thinking that my upgrade card could use an upgrade check out the new one and my original copy scanned together:

That trashed copy was part of my original bulk purchase of 20-something cards last summer. Here are the backs (the improvement is more dramatic in-hand):

So thus ends my pursuit of the Civil War News set. There are a couple of cards that could use a replacement if I decided to be fussy about it but rounded corners don't bother me much. You can check out the post that marked my kicking off this chase by clicking here.

'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.

Ending the War

A few months back I made a flurry of buys on eBay and COMC to try and close out this 1962 Civil War News set. I scoured the sites until I had dug up every needed card available in decent shape and at a good price. Then the well went dry but that's to be expected. When you run the same searches day after day for a set like this it doesn't take long to reach a point of diminishing returns.

I jumped back in a couple of weeks ago and in the course of a half hour or so I was able to knock out my wantlist with some pretty sweet cards. I paid a bit more than I had for most of the rest of the set but I tend to do that as I get close to finishing off a goal. 

The General Lee card above looks a bit washed out in the scan for some reason. It's better looking in hand. The original art isn't as vibrant as some of the others for sure.

'Death' and 'Dying' sure pop up on a bunch of these.

Here are a couple more that portray close range gruesomeness.

I remember being fascinated by the idea of a Civil War era submarine. I think I went and found a book about sub and marine warfare of the time in St. Mary's School's meager library.

I was also interested in Stonewall Jackson. I think I still have an old bio of him on my shelves somewhere. I poked around to check on the accuracy of this card. The date on the front is May 10, 1863.

Jackson was shot (yes, by his own men accidentally) on May 2. He died on May 10 and that fact was generally reported on May 13 or thereabouts. So if I was grading this as a history teacher might grade a report I'd give the Topps writer a "C".

So this ends my quest for this really cool (and nostalgia filled) set. I have two upgrades en-route and there may be another card or two that I'll look at eventually but now it's time for a different challenge.

As soon as I post this I'm headed over tot he TriStar show in Houston. It'll be good to get to a show for the first time in months. I won't even mind paying $10 to park and another nine to get in.*

My goal: a 1958 Mantle in 'f/g' shape for the price of a 'poor' one.

*= #alternativefacts. It's gonna piss me off royally to drop most all of a twenty before I even see one table.

Upgrade Mania

After chasing the '59 Topps set a card or two at a time I decided that a more efficient way to collect a set was to start with a large lot purchase. Doing so gets you a big jump on the set at a reasonable cost per card. Downside being that large but affordable lots invariably contain some filler cards that will need upgrading. That's even true in my case despite my rather liberal view of what makes a card 'acceptable'.

I employed the 'large lot' strategy with the 1960 Topps set, the Civil War News set and most recently with the 1958 Topps set. Each purchased lot definitely had a card or two that fell into the 'I won't even put this into the binder' category.

1960 Topps Don Elston.

This beauty came in my 200 card lot. All-in-all the cards were pretty sweet but this one? Yikes.

Actually the corners were pretty nice but I think I went to eBay the day the cards arrived and found a better one:

Softer corners but at least Elston has a face.  I like to pass along my vintage dupes but there was no way I could put that first one in a PWE. It went in the trash.

1958 Topps Hank Foiles.

The guy who sold me the big lot of '58s had them in a box in card number order. That meant that Hank Foiles here, card #4 in the set, was  right on top. I remember immediately thinking that I'd made a huge mistake. The cards in the listing looked to be in at least Fair shape, most looked better than that. But if this card was representative of what I was getting then even at under a buck a card I was going to be very disappointed.

Luckily the Foiles card was the worst card in the box. By quite a wide margin. Again I had to wonder why the seller had even bothered with it. I didn't do as I did with the '60 Elston and find a replacement right away but I found one for sale on eBay from a seller I've dealt with and loaded it in my cart. I bought it a few days later with some others. Again the replacement Foiles card isn't perfect but it is perfectly fine for my binder.

The new one looks even better when placed alongside the original.

1962 Civil War News 'The War Ends'.

This card came with the original lot I picked up on eBay that averaged about a dollar each. It may be definitely is the worst card I've ever paid for. I had fair warning though. The seller went out of his way to make the condition of some of the cards very clear. He even emailed me about it after I paid.

It was obviously trimmed to include the card number.

With the cost of nice ungraded cards from this set being pretty high (routinely in the $7 to $10+ range) I did well with the lot I bought. So I didn't feel bad for paying $8 for the replacement

It's off-center but nearly every card in the set was miscut, or so it seems from looking at what I have and what is for sale. But other than that it's the nicest example of the nearly 50 CWN cards I now have. Bottom line...CWN #82 went from worst to first in my binder.

I'll continue to play the upgrade game with my 1958 set. But other than the Foiles that will have to be when I'm finished with the thing.