Baseball Cards Years and Manufacturers Ranked by Strongest and Weakest Cardboard!

Hi Folks,

   For those of you that have been collecting for many years, or for those that collect vintage baseball cards, at some point in time, you might have noticed a trend among certain years of baseball cards, and among certain manufacturers. There are just some years of cards that are close to impossible to find with sharp corners, without paint chipping... cards that will hold up if you look at them the wrong way!

   For the sake of "Vintage", which I have defined as 20 years or older, I've ranked the Top 3 strongest cardboard years with the manufacturers, and I have also ranked the Top 3 weakest cardboard years with the manufacturers. Included in deciding these ranks are considerations of the wear and tear effects of what I call "Pokemon" corners (rounded corners), wavy edges, and easy creasing. Again, please remember, this is from my experience of collecting, buying, selling, and handling thousands upon thousands of these cards over the past 30+ years that I have been in the hobby.

TOP 3 STRONGEST CARDBOARD BASEBALL CARD YEARS AND MANUFACTURER:

1) 1983 FLEER: After a decent showing in 1981 and 1982 with their first 2 re-emergence years in the hobby, the Fleer set from 1983 is built to last. This is extremely fortunate, because 3 major Hall of Famer Rookie Cards (Wade Boggs, Tony Gwynn, and Ryne Sandberg) are included in this set, among many other major HOF Stars. There is something different and almost space-age to the 1983 Fleer cards, and they can "take a punch" and survive, unscathed. The Winner!!

2) 1991 UPPER DECK: Another set in the 3rd year of the company's baseball card set issue, the 1991 Upper Deck issue is made of quite a strong cardboard! Although they were certainly over-produced, there are still some great cards in this set, like the 3rd year Ken Griffey Jr. Card, as well as another HOF'er, Jeff Bagwell, with his rookie card in this set.

3) 1969 TOPPS: OK, I had to throw one in for Topps, and honestly, with 50 years of time on them, these cards have held up extremely well, but, whatever Topps did in 1969 did not last, because the 1970 Topps cards went downhill!

TOP 3 WEAKEST CARDBOARD BASEBALL CARD YEARS AND MANUFACTURER:

1) 1976 TOPPS: My absolute favorite set, as I remember going to a store as a 5 year old and buying a pack (I wish I bought a few cases...what was I thinking??). However, even with 1976 cards acquired via set breaks, which is where a majority of cards on CardboardandCoins.com come from, there is still a major inherent weakness to the corners and the paint on these cards, and errant creasing building from the corners inward. Unless they are stored in a sleeve and a top loader, avoiding any type of handling or exposure to air, these cards are tough! The 1975 Topps card stock was not nearly as bad, however the 1976 Topps and the following year, 1977 Topps, were the two worst, in my experience.

2) 1977 TOPPS: As mentioned above, this is another set that yields very easily to excessive handling, and also, to open air exposure. Paint chipping is more evident on the 1977 cards vs the 1976 cards, but these are slightly less susceptible to errant creasing.

3) 1970 TOPPS: After a relatively banner year for cardboard strength in 1969, the 1970 Topps became one of the most crease-likely cards that have been made. The cardboard is not necessarily super weak, but there is something to the internal structure of the cards that makes them develop stacking creases, as I call them (creases that build in size and spider out across the card). It seems the lower/earlier series of the 1970 Topps baseball cards are the worst (perhaps due to the lesser amount of handling on the higher series?)

   Aside from having to deal with the issues highlighted above, I would not want the composition of baseball cards to be anything but cardboard...but to the manufacturers, we ask; Please try to copy the formula that made the 1983 Fleer baseball cards the "Iron Mike Tyson" of the baseball card collecting hobby!!

   How has your experience been with the Cardboard treasures that we all know and love? I'd love to know!


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Steve Carlton Photo-Bombed by Gary Matthews; The Top 5 Oddest Baseball Card Errors

Hi Friends,
   Well, as you probably know, there are a lot of errors woven into the fabric of each hobby. In Stamp Collecting, there is a coveted upside down airplane stamp worth thousands, if not millions. In coin collecting, there are certain doubled-die error coins that can run into the multiple thousands of dollars. In the baseball card hobby, we have some pretty cool errors, but maybe not as expensive as some of the errors in the previously-mentioned hobbies. We do happen to own the claim to one of the most expensive and rarest items, the T206 Honus Wagner card. However, for the sake of staying on topic, let's take a look at the top 5 oddest baseball card error cards.


1984 Topps Steve Carlton/Gary Matthews:

This one is straight comical, as the 1984 Topps theme was to have the player image with a headshot of the player at the bottom. This card appears to be a production room faux paux. Either that or Gary Matthews was trying to get "Silent Steve" Carlton to actually speak by surprise photo-bombing him!


1988 Fleer Jerry Browne:

        

Similar to the Carlton/Matthews error above, this is also quite a blatant error. The image on the Jerry Browne card produced by Fleer in 1988 was certainly not Jerry Browne. The card has the actual image of Bob Brower, and if you know who he is, you'd realize this card was blatantly incorrect.


1986 Topps Blank Backs:

This is one that everyone really has fun with, and it's the blank-back 1986 Topps Cards. There is always such a jolt of electricity when you flip a card over and there is nothing there! You go from expecting the bright red background of the reverse to hit you and you see nothing but plain cardboard. You just never forget the first time that happens to you. After that first one, I spent a whole week straight looking at every one of my cards backwards!


1982 Topps Pascual Perez "No Position" Error:

When you collect cards, you most probably like to go through them and compare stats. As an 11-year old collecting baseball cards, I often perused my cards to size up the competition for my New York Mets (that's how Nerds like I did such things in the "Land Before Computers"!). Well, I get to Pascual Perez, and I felt like something was missing, and then it hit me...the word "Pitcher" was not there! It took me some time, since there was no Internet, but the next show I went to, they confirmed this as part of a larger pool of errors in the 1982 Topps Set. What a treasured find, of which I still have it to this day!


1990 Frank Thomas No Name on Front (NNOF):

This has become a wildly popular card, already being Thomas' Rookie Card, pushing up it's price as it goes.

The error parade continues to this day, as I have gotten my hands on a few 2015 Bowman cards with no names on the front (I have Stephen Matz and Greg Bird). If interested, drop me a note here.


As for normal, non-error cards, we have just posted a substantial # of cards, including some high-grade vintage cards, such as:

1970 Topps #75 Jim Kaat, graded by C&C as an 8.6 NM-MT+


1971 Topps #164 Reds Rookies (Milt Wilcox, Duffy), GRADE 7.5 NM+


1975 Topps #194 1956 MVPs Mickey Mantle and Don Newcombe, Graded 7 NM


1976 Topps #95 Brooks Robinson, 3rd Base, Orioles, Multiple Gold Gloves, Graded 8 NM-MT



Please check out our website to view more high-grade vintage cards and all of our other products.

Regards,
Your friends at CardboardandCoins.com

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Why Card Sleeves contribute to Low Population!!

Hello Everyone,
   Welcome to CardboardandCoins.com, a site that was created to join two great hobbies, Card collecting and Coin collecting.

   I've been in the hobby, or "hobbies" I should say, for close to 30 years. I grew up during a time when Saturday meant cartoons in the morning, bowling with the Cub Scouts, a trip to the arcade, and baseball cards on the way home. Later in the day, it was time to go through the big change bucket from the past week, and to sort through all of the years of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, and to put them in the Whitman folders I was filling for each type of coin. Yes, I was...and I still am...a proud dork!

   As far as baseball cards, I remember laughing at some of the cards from the 1983 Topps baseball set, and in particular, the Wade Boggs card (his rookie). Well, as the title of this post reads, let me explain and use the Boggs rookie as the perfect example.

   Just last week, I decided to remove some old school sleeves off some cards and replace them with the new Penny Sleeves. Simple enough, right? I get to good ole' Wade and the darn penny sleeve lifted up the first layer in the lower left corner of the card! Really? How could these little plastic slips cause such destruction? It makes me wonder that if this happened to me (it does happen from time to time), then think of how many others are having the same issue.

   Perhaps some of you were trying to sleeve a 1977 Don Money card, but then this mishap prevents the card from fetching a 10. The end result is the 1977 Topps card of Don Money (a lifetime .261 hitter) being more valuable than the 1977 Topps card of Rod Carew (a lifetime .328 hitter). Oh, bittersweet population. For those of you who are not aware of population, it means the total amount of a certain card that was graded a "10" for example, by a specific grading company. So when you see a low population of high-grades for a specific card, just blame the Sleeves!

   Now, the alternative would be life without the penny sleeves. Think of all of the cards out there with scuffed up surfaces and greasy finger marks. No thanks. Penny sleeves are very important, and when used properly in a controlled environment with some peer supervision, they can prove to be quite helpful.

   Remember: do NOT top-load your card without putting the card in a sleeve first. It pays to have an extra layer of friction to hold the card in place, or you might have the same incident that happened to me with the 1985 McGwire Rookie (It's too painful; I don't want to get into it, but let's just say cards slide out of top loaders when they're not sleeved). Cards also have a tendency to fall with precision accuracy right onto one of their 4 corners. I know what you are about to ask; Yes, it did happen to me. Learn from that sad incident. Sorry, Mr. McGwire. I know you'd probably pick me up by the throat with one hand. Umm, but please kindly refrain.

   So, with all of that said, welcome to our site. Going forward, you'll probably notice I refer to our hobbies as our "industry". In the coming months, we have a lot of surprises planned for you here, including some Blog posts written by (and also written about) some pretty influential folks in our industry. We are in talks with a few different webstore providers, and our inventory should start appearing on the site within a few weeks. Be sure to bookmark us and check back often!

   In closing, who's going to the National at Hofstra University in Long Island this weekend?

Best Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
www.CardboardandCoins.com



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