1966 Lyons Maid Famous People Cards

I think I got these 5 cards from sportlots in an auction lot, maybe as individual cards because I seem to recall individually picking the Danny Kaye and Gilbert & Sulivan cards maybe even the Walt Disney.  I forget exactly when I got them. Any way this group of cards is from a 1966  set of "Famous People" by Lyons Maid an ice cream maker from England. There are 48 cards in the set I got these 5:

Cards # 19 William Shakespeare, #23 Danny Kaye, #33 Gilbert and Sullivan, #42 Walt Disney and #46 Pablo Picasso.

Checking Off Some Sportlots First 2022 Sportlots Order

 I got some cards from a couple of Sportlots Auctions from two sellers one was in Canada but the cards came fairly quickly as if they were the US. The first Sportlots order for this year 2022. A couple of them were vintage checklists. One unmarked and one partly marked on the back. Plus a couple of 1972 Topps Baseball "Boyhood Photos Of The Stars" (one I apparently have a duplicate of because I already had a scan of it). Anyway you want to see the cards not read by blabbering.

1963 Topps Baseball 79 1st Series Checklist

Cards 1-88 Unmarked

1969 Topps Baseball 214 3rd Series Checklist

Cards 219-327 (Plus Autographed Photos 1-33)

Some marking on back

1971 Topps Baseball 245 Jim Kaat Minnesota Twins

1972 Topps Baseball 344 Boyhood Photos of the Stars

Dave McNally Baltimore Orioles

1972 Topps Baseball 347 Boyhood Photos of the Stars

Tom Seaver New York Mets

Washington Wednesday: R.I.P. Wes "Mr. Bullet" Unseld

R.I.P. WES UNSELD 1946-2020

On Tuesday 02 June of this year 2020 while doing my daily routine of checking out the main page of TCDB (Trading Card Database) for the random card of the day, new forum posts, born on today and then finally In Memoriam I saw the image of a familiar RC. (I don't have the card but am familiar with it). That of perhaps the most iconic Washington Basketball Player of All-Time Wes Unseld. I was beyond shocked another of my childhood sports idols passed from this Earth. I think it was during the years between his playing career (1981) to his coaching career (1988) that I drifted away from being a basketball fan and would eventually stop caring about the sport until a few years ago. Plus I was more attached to football at the time, as the Washington Senators were long gone, and the Washington Capitals were not very good yet.

1969-70 Topps Basketball: 56 Wes Unseld Baltimore Bullets

Image from comc.com

OK so his rookie card was when the Bullets were still the Baltimore Bullets, but the man would play his entire career with the Bullets Franchise, work with the front office and then later return to the court as Head Coach. He then moved onto General Manager for the team on into the transition to the name change to Wizards and a few years after that.

Here are some (but not all) of my Unseld Cards as a tribute to one of my childhood Icons. For the most part I have already shown these cards on this blog sometime previously so I don't need to explain them.

The following items are a few gems in my collection:

Next is a "card" in my collection that is more of a mini poster than a real "card" it is from 1969-70 Topps and they call it a "ruler" it is only 10 inches by 2.5 inches so not a true ruler but hey it is only paper. I got it from Ebay I think some years back for I forget how much I might have mentioned where and when some posts back a few years back.

1969-70 Topps Basketball Ruler: 22 Wes Unseld Baltimore Bullets

Finally here is a photo of an item I have from my childhood, the photo is actually from an image search I did a few years back and from someone's Ebay auction for which they had I think the whole set was listed for of course way too much money. I forget if they sold or not. Anyway as I said this is something that I actually have but not my copy in the image (I haven't scanned or photographed mine). It is a mini poster that was available from McDonald's in 1976. The size is 12" x 16" One of those premium things during the basketball season that year. Each week they featured a new poster that had two caricatures of Washington Bullets players. There are a total of 4 mini posters. This is the one with Wes and K.C. Jones.

1976 McDonald's Washington Bullets mini poster: K.C. Jones and Wes Unseld

MFTP: A Handful of Rams From 67 and 73

MailDazed From The Pazt:

A Handfull of Rams from 1967 & 1973

OK so for this post I was going to do a Strive For '65 post but the cards I wasn't sure if I had blogged about or not I had blogged about well over a year ago. I don't think I blogged about the cards that were with them, but those 2 or 3 cards are for some other post some other time ...maybe. Right now I want to show off some later vintage cards and some that are more Neo-Vintage cards. All of them are Los Angeles Rams cards. Oh big surprise there huh? I'm pressed for time to get this post in while it is still April so I won't go into details on the players or even the cards specifically. I'll just show 'em. I'm not very good at telling about player's careers anyway.

I received the cards on 31 December 2018 from a Sportlots auction. Apparently they were all part of one single five card lot that I got for 25¢ plus $3.50 shipping. There are 5 cards total, Two 1967 Philadelphia Gum Football Cards and Three 1973 Topps Football Cards.

1967 PHILADELPHIA GUM FOOTBALL

1967 Philadelphia Gum Football: 90 Dave Jones Los Angeles Rams

1967 Philadelphia Gum Football: 91 Tommy McDonald Los Angeles Rams

1973 TOPPS FOOTBALL

1973 Topps Football: 41 Les Josephson Los Angeles Rams

1973 Topps Football: 324 Gene Howard Los Angeles Rams

1973 Topps Football: 365 Dave Elmendorf Los Angeles Rams

COTW: 1961 Topps Moe Thacker

1961 Topps Moe Thacker

Let The Sunshine, Let The Sunshine in...

Don't let The Sun go down on me.

This month's quick and dirty Card of The Whenever is a card I have had for a long time and an upgrade that I have also had for sometime just not as long. I don't remember when or where I got the first poor one, nor am I even sure of where I got the upgrade. Probably from Sportlots maybe from Ebay. I forget and obviously also forget for how much.

Anyway my original one  which the more I think about it I might have gotten from a repack box of some kind or not. So the card in question 1961 Topps Baseball 12 Moe Thacker Chicago Cubs:

No the colors from my scanner were not off and no your monitor colors are not off. This card is extremely sun faded on the front. There is the slightest bit of red in the Cubs "C" on the cap and where his name should be there is the very slightest indication that some printing was once there. So the fading rules out it being an ink test variant. There is also a roundish shaped bump or crease at the top as if a quarter might have spent some time putting pressure on the card. Hmm that reminds me of the gumball/card vending machine(s) they used to have many years ago at my LCS (House of Cards). They used to put common vintage cards in those machines and that is where I would often get some of my first late 1950s and early 1960s vintage cards. For a quarter (I think they also had a 50 cent machine) you would get a gumball and a card. Usually they were vintage baseball cards, but I think on occasion the cards in the machine were also non-sport cards or football. But I digress, majorly.

Here is the back of the sun faded copy of this card: Yes it is off centered/miscut toward the top edge.

I forget how long I had the faded copy before I got around to getting the upgrade:

and its back:

Finally a side by side image of the fronts just for the fun of it.

I probably should have reversed them putting the faded copy on the left and the replacement upgrade on the right. Oh well guess I was speed photo editing again.

Catching A White Whale: 1968 Style

Well "Thar She Blows" I snagged a White Whale for my vintage PC on Wednesday 26 September 2018. [OK this post has been sitting in the queue a while]

The Classic Tale of a White Whale

This particular Ivory sea monster is the rookie card of a huge superstar and a childhood hero. When I was in elementary school from about 3rd grade to 6th grade the school principal had a yearly school-wide "write a book" project. Long story short my first year of that project my book had a cameo of this childhood hero. A children's book written by a child that reads like a child wrote it. Maybe one day I'll blog about it on my regular blog ( I started a draft for the post). One year, I think it was that same year, a kid wrote a story about "Charlie's Angels" but misspelled "Angels" as "Angles" so it might have been a math book.  but I digress...

This featured card is a card that easily starts over priced at over $50 at beginning bid on Ebay with BIN fixed rate prices of $100, $200 or more depending on condition and occasionally which variant it is. Yes this card has an Error version and a Corrected version. I got the corrected version. It would be nice to one day get the error version but I'm not going to hold my breath on it as it goes for at least twice what this version goes for.

I got my reasonably good conditioned copy for a nice price, not quite a steal but hovering around the high end of my comfort range. Not quite to my Maximum but getting close around the starting to sweat zone. I got it from Ebay at the opening bid price of $29.95 with $2.95 shipping. Around the same time I won this copy looking at completed/sold auctions I saw a miscut copy (listed as being "mint") that went for $18.51 with only 2 bids. Some reprints have gone for $2 to $12. So I didn't too to bad.

Smart collectors can tell that I am delaying the identification of the card for dramatic reasons. If this were an episode of Pawn Stars we would cut to a commercial break for even more suspense.

The White Whale Card I harpooned back in September of 2018 is:

1968 Topps Baseball: 247 Cincinnati Red 1968 Rookie Stars:

Johnny Bench and Ron Tompkins

I mentioned I had the corrected version. Some may wonder what the "error" of this card is. On the back the mini bio for Johnny starts off  "Johnny impressed the Reds..." the error misspells the word "the" as "tne" using an "n" instead of an "h". As I said I have the corrected version.

BTW: I still have another White Whale post in my draft queue that has been sitting there for years. My biggest procrastination delay for it of course has been not scanning stuff (The white whale plus some related cards from it's set). That White Whale was a more determined to catch it than this one was. Sort of. I had been watching this card off and on for several years at Ebay. I also had it as number 3 on my Capt K's Coveted 10 list and forgot it was on it til around 10 Jan of this year 2019.

Fearsome Foursome Fan Faves

For collectors of vintage cards this design is an homage to the 1966 Topps Football design, which in turn is sort of an homage to the 1955 Bowman Baseball design. The most prominent feature is the wood grain look with the television screen image. In 2005 Topps produced an All-Time Fans Favorites Football set (although the TradingCardDataBase lists these as being 2004) The All-Time Fans Favorites set is similar to the Topps Archives type sets where they use older and vintage card designs for newer cards. Most of the designs from this set appear to be from the 1980s and late 1970s.

Here is a 4 card subset from that set the features the best players from my fave (and by fave I mean tied for number one) NFL team the Los Angeles Rams recently returned from being in St. Louis for 20 years (1995-2015). These four players individually had impressive careers primarily played for the Rams together they were known as the FEARSOME FOURSOME. OK one of a few defensive lines that went by that name, but the Rams were perhaps the most widely known. The Giants, Lions and Chargers have also had that nickname applied to their defensive line around the 1950s to 1970s era.

The Rams Fearsome Foursome were: Deacon Jones, Lamar Lundy, Merlin Olsen and Rosey Grier. In my book they are the FEARSOME FOURSOME of note.

2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Football - 19 Deacon Jones

2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Football - 58 Lamar Lundy

Dag-nab-it I thought I had straightened/rotated this back image

2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Football - 68 Merlin Olsen

2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Football - 78 Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier

For Reference:

 1955 Bowman Baseball

 1955 Bowman Baseball: 104 Bob Porterfield Washington Senators

1966 Topps Football

1966 Topps Football - 32 Cookie Gilchrist Denver Broncos