Vintage Basketball Cards

A GUIDE TO PRE-1970 BASKETBALL CARDS

News For January 29, 2006

You Are Not Seeing Things
You are not seeing things -- we are back! After over a year of silence ... I am working on this site again. So, start checking back daily. So much has happened this last year that I don't even know where to begin.

Check out the Forum!!
For the last twenty something days I have been working on the forum. Check it out! Not even a month has gone by and we have over 500 users. I'm giving free packs away left and right so why check it out.

Added Pics
I added 3 pics. I added a picture of a sealed 1948 bowman pack (the one that went for $20,000 on Mastronet). I also added 2 pictures of a 1948 uncut Bowman sheet. Both are grey-backs. The first is without red or blue ink being printed on the sheet. The second is without the red ink. This shows how greyback sheets can produce real Mikans (since Mikan's don't have red in them) and how they can be cut into PSA 10s right from the sheet.

News For December 7, 2004

1918 Wilson Advertising
This sold on ebay a few months back for I think $300-$400. There is also one for football and I think baseball and tennis. Really cool to look at. The above picture is not a picture of the entire poster, just a clip of the main illustration.

News For December 6, 2004

1948 Topps Magic Photo
This is a really cool advertising piece that basically doubles the amount of information I knew about this set. I think that these were issued over multiple years. I'm not really sure if there was more than one series. I'd love to get my hands on an unopened pack. I'd love to get my hands on an uncut strip of a basketball player ... or maybe even just an undeveloped card. Sooo coool. These are very hard to find in nice condition ... let alone nice condition with good development attributes. I changed the extension of this file from .bmp to .jpg ... so if you are having trouble viewing it ... just download it and change the extension.

News For December 2, 2004

1956 Hood Diary
I'm not too sure of the year here. Nonetheless ... these cards are cool. A few have popped up recently. They are smaller than normal cards ... but if I have the correct year ... where can you find a cousy card that pre-dates his 1957 rookie! I would estimate that the total number I know about to be roughly 30 cards.

News For November 26, 2004

1956 7-Up
One of the rarest sets in the hobby. Ed Mikan (George Mikans brother) is included in the set.

News For November 24, 2004

1906 Hickey's
Its updates like these that keep people coming back -- pictures of cards that very few even know about -- let alone have seen. This card came to my attention over the course of this year. It is a 1906 strip from Hickeys Deparment Stores. The strip is made out of a very thin paper and has about 10-15 player images. Two of these images are of basketball players. Translation: If you consider the players on the Hickey’s Strip “cards,” then this would be the first player-specific basketball card in existence (coolness). I know of only 3 and I know that 2 of these 3 came from the same seller. My copy is available in the “store” section of this webpage. Why am I selling it? Because, I mainly want some interesting items in my store and also because I could use the money to buy a bunch of other things. Also, because I lean on the side that the strip is not a card (so it doesn’t fit into my collection). Someone needs to do research on the two players on the strip (after which … maybe I will change my mind and keep the strip).

News For November 23, 2004

Rarity Change
Since January, I've bought many new cards and had conversations with many new collectors. My one remark is ... that some of these really rare cards ... are really rare ... but not as rare as we once thought. For example, before January, I only knew of like 1 near complete Scott's set. Now I know of like 7 or 8. As per another example, before January, I know of only 1 Bread for Health set, now I know of like 7 or 8. The sets that I maintained their extreme rarity was the Bell Brand set. I still only know of 1 near complete set out there. As for Topps Test, no new cards have been found. There are, however, enough cards out there to make 15-20 sets (this is just an estimate, however, based on the number of cards from each of the three major finds). Even an extra 7-up set popped up this year.

Great Purchase
In one of the last Hunt Auctions, there was a complete, and pristine, 7-up capitals set. The set was mislabeled as "advertising photos." But, they were "the 7-up cards" nonetheless. One of my good buddies was bidding on it so I didn't place a bid. Apparently, nobody else found the set either as the set sold for a measly $700. To put this in perspective, I paid over $300 for my only copy on ebay a few weeks before. My copy literally is missing about 25% of the card and the portion of the card that does remain is severly stained/damaged. This set also has the only professional card of Ed Mikan (George Mikan's brother) who played for two years with the capitals (I think). To put this in perspective, each card should be worth $700 with the stars going for roughly $2000. To put this in perspective, that collector could have sold the set he bought for $700 for about $7,000 that same night (if he, himself, didn't need the set).

Collecting Goal Met!
Don't know how much everyone will care about this, but I reached my primary goal in the hobby -- to obtain an example of every rare type of basketball card out there. I have an example of a Scott's. I have an example of Bell Brands. I have an examlpe of basically everything (which rocks). I don't have examples of some of the issues that I can always get an example up (like B-33s etc), but I'll get those when I get a chance. Problem is that now I guess my goal is to get a copy of each vintage basketball card (ouch).

Rumor Mill
This is just a rumor. I do not know the validity of this rumor. Yet, I'm going to write it anyway. I was of the understanding that there were around 13 1957 Topps Basketball packs. As a result, I posted earlier that I thought this upcoming Mastro lot of 1957 Topps basketball packs was the last lot of the "canadian find." However, I was talking to an advanced collector last night and he was under the impression that there were about 33 1957 Topps Basketball packs that were found. I think I'm right, because I heard it from a few people. Nonetheless, when I heard the facts they were that items were still being dug up. So what is this "find" all about? Well, apparently a vintage canadian distributor took a box (or two) of each product he bought and saved it for old times sake. The son of that distributor decided to start selling these away (I heard that he is donating everything to charity, but who knows if this is true). This is the reason why you've been noticing a lot of vintage wax in the last few major auctions (most notably, mastros). For 1957, I heard they found a half-box with like 13 packs in it, where the box was torn and in cruddy condition. I heard that they were going to sell the packs in two different auctions. Now, everything appears to be true (as envinced by the cruddy box they put on sale). Yet, it looks like they divided the find into three Mastros auctions (even though some may argue that the last unscheduled and spur of the moment mastros auction wasn't really a true Mastros auction. Either way, you now know what I know (so somebody else start a vintage basketball card site so I can go study for the Bar).

Site Updates
As most of you have seen, I'm back to my old ways -- updating my website (after like a month of trying to figure out how to use a MAC). It may take some time, however, before I have substantial news updates for the basketball section. As you may have noticed from the main page (www.sportscards.info) I am trying to expand this sites coverage to every sport. My initial plan is to include a list of every set for every sport and include a picture of a card from every set. After I finish this "phase I" development, I will expand the coverage of each of the other sections to include complete set listings.

How I Have So Much Time
In looking at all of these updates, you may be asking ... "how do you have so much time." The Answer is simple, I get bored to death every night with 4 hours of law school classes. Unfortunately for this site, my last law school class is in two weeks. Without boring law school classes, who knows if this site will ever have a substantial update again.

News For November 19, 2004

Mastros Next
I got the auction catalogue today. The item of interest is the lot of 1957 Topps packs. From the information that I have, this is the last lot (which correlates to what I said before the first 1957 pack went on the auction block), But, I guess we will soon see just how many surfaced. The rest of the basketball stuff is mainstream. A ton of high grade 1948 Bowmans.

News For November 17, 2004

New Features
Ok, so it looks like I'm back in action! Back updating the site again! Anyway, I added a forum for all sportscards on the main page. This is a new forum with better functionality then the forum I used to have. Start using it!
I also added an online store. One that works! Most of the items I have on there right now were listed with very strong prices. I don't expect anything to sell, but I thought it would be fun to get the functionality of the site down. If something sells, all the better.

1960 Kahns
PSA got in new holders that actually fit the 1960 Kahns cards. Problem is ... the other Kahn's issues (the ones that are slighly bigger) do not have specialized PSA holders. Translation -- do not get your Kahns graded by PSA until you have them confirm that they will have "safe holders" for your cards (i.e., holders in which your cards won't bang around inside the holder if moved).ß

News For November 10, 2004

Back in Action
So, after a little bit of a haitus, I finally got a new home computer. Translation -- I now should (emphasis added) be able to update this website. However, I am working off a MAC and nothing seems to be working ... so I can't count on any fancy updates ... just news updates for now.

SportsCards.Info
If you are reading this then vintagebasketballcards.info is no more. I transferred the site to SportsCards.info in order to have a shorter and more recognizable name for the website. There is a chance that I will change the site name again in the future. I have a couple of heavy bids out there for major sportscard domain names and we will see what happens.

Year to Date

Put simply, this year has been insane. The largest basketball collector got out of the hobby and many people got a bite of the action. I know I have to thank him for 1/2 of my now almost complete topps test set. This has been the most notable thing that has happened this year in the vintage basketball card hobby. So what's the second? I would have to say the second is the Canadian find of wax. Included in the find were more than 10 packs of 1957 basketball. To put this into perspective ... i never knew of anyone that had even a picture of an unopened pack of 1957. Guess that is why they went for roughly $10,000 a pop. If you don't think the basketball card market is hot right now ... read that number back to you and compare it to other packs being sold in other sports.

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