I hinted a few posts back that I seriously broke my quarter-a-card vintage rule. I spent $15 on a ten card lot. I don't think I regret it.
The ten cards ranged in condition from pretty bad to seriously poor. Here are five of the backs. Ouch!
Here are three more cards from the lot. Laughlin cards are nice but are a little overrated. The fronts are pretty good, but the backs of the cards were poorly written or edited. The '49 card mentions that the Yankees won the pivotal Game 3 in the ninth inning. Would have been nice to know how (RBI hits by Mize and Coleman in the top of the 9th). The '61 card mentions that the Yankees had a new manager but never mentions his name (Ralph Houk). The '54 Leja is actually in nice shape minus the small corner that is missing.
There were two big cards in the lot that convinced me to pull the trigger, because you can rarely find them under $15 by themselves and their condition was not offensive to me.
1963 Roger Maris. That one big crease is the only blemish, and it doesn't detract from Maris's soulful stare into the camera, or the action photo that looks like a lot like his 61st HR in 1961.
Finally, a 1958 Yogi Berra! It's a bit scratched up but his face is OK. The back has some paper glued in the corners but it's much better than the ones I showed at the top of this post. The staples were much more prominent though, so after I took this photo I tried to take them out myself . . .
Here's how I did. I did make the staple hole on the upper right a little bigger, but other than that it came out OK. Another card where the personality really comes through. I wouldn't do it all the time, but for a lot like this I felt OK breaking my rule, and I'm excited to add these to my collection.
I'd say you did pretty well there. Nothing wrong with having a handful of poor-condition vintage cards in the collection, anyhow. It can help a person hearken back to the days when kids would actually do things like staple or tape their cards to the wall, or into photo albums.
ReplyDeleteFleer did not have the licensing rights with MLB when the Laughlin sets were released so Laughlin had to write around not being able to mention names. He actually re-edited copy from his earlier sets before he hooked up with Fleer to avoid names. He said how difficult this was in some of the research I found when writing the article on the sets for Beckett.
ReplyDeleteThis lot was made for you! :)
ReplyDeleteI'll break my own rules from time to time. As long as you're happy (and you're not hurting anyone in the process)... that's all that matters.
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