2013 Turkey Red – 6 packs

As mentioned yesterday, I was able to get in early enough and purchase some Turkey Red packs through Topps online promotion.  Topps had a pre-sale, selling packs for $20 each.  That sold out very quickly, and then a week later they had a regular sale for $25 each.  That also sold out very quickly.  I got in on the pre sale and ordered 6 packs.  I think my reasoning for 6 was free shipping.  If I remember right, getting over 100 bucks got you free shipping.  Since it was really $19.99, to get over that amount I needed 6.  And it seemed like a good number.  Here’s what the packs look like – they were really cardboard mini-boxes that I think are meant to remind you of some tobacco packaging from the early 20th century.

The way these work, there are 10 regular cards and 1 autograph in each pack.  I didn’t pull any major mojo, and I got quite a few more doubles than I would have preferred (43 singles, 17 doubles).

But the cards are really nice.  The design is nice, the pictures are pretty good.  The card stock seems better than some of the other retro releases Topps has (like Gypsy Queen).  I also like that these are only current players.

And, naturally, I got 6 autographs.  I showed one of them yesterday.  And I got one double of the auto, too.  Here’s the 4 other autographs.  Nothing to write home about, but I think that’s the nature of this type of purchase – there’s a chance at something really nice, but you may not pull a huge hit.  I bought this product because of the base cards, though, which are very nice as I said above!

Turkey Red, 2013 Version

Unlike a few other bloggers I’ve read about, I was lucky enough to make it on to Topps web site in time to purchase some packs (they’re more like mini-boxes) of the online-exclusive Turkey Red.

Here’s the first card.

Here’s the rest of the first pack.  Pulled both rookie of the year winners.

Here’s the autograph.

I’ll show some more tomorrow,

Ty Cobb the King – Panini Golden Age Mini comparisons

I did minis with Broad Leaf backs and Croft’s Candy advertisements over the last two days, the last one is the rarer back out of the retro card backs available. Ty Cobb King of the Tobacco World – T-206 This version of the the Ty Cobb T-206 portrait had some recent news in the baseball card world.  For comparison, the Honus Wagner T-206 card is the most valuable baseball card out there, and one of the two most famous cards in history.  It’s the “holy grail” of baseball cards.  But this card known as the “Cobb/Cobb” (as opposed to the Cobb/Broadleaf or the Cobb/Piedmont) is quite a bit rarer.  There are 16 known backs to the T-206 set, but only the red Ty Cobb portrait has this advertising back.  It’s an advertisement for a Ty Cobb brand of tobacco.  There’s a lot more to read about it here, but here’s a good article with the details.

Panini paid homage to this with a rare (1 per box) mini.  Each card, not just the Cobb, has a version.  Of course, Cobb is the only player who has a card with this back in the original T-206 set and the Panini Golden Age product. There’s also one mini you can get in the product that isn’t a parallel – it’s a direct throwback to the T-206 set.  The holy grail itself, a reprint of the Wagner card.

There’s also one more mini – it’s a parallel that doesn’t have a direct correlation to a tobacco era set.  Panini put its own logo on the back of the cards, with a knight and a lance.  Kind of cool, though I don’t like 1 of 1 cards in general.

Panini Golden Age Mini comparisons – Croft’s Candy

The WordPress theme I’ve had for the entire existence of this blog went kaput today.  So I changed up.  Not sure if I’ll keep this one or not.  I like it ok – it does seem like it uses space better.

I did Broad Leaf backs yesterday, today I’ll compare another card back available in Panini Golden Age.  The Croft’s Candy cards were from the same tobacco era as the T206 set – but as the name indicates, they came from a different product.

Croft’s Candy – E92

The Croft’s Candy minis are harder to get than the Broad Leaf counterparts – I think 3 or so red ones per box and about 1 blue per box.

The original Croft’s Candy cards were from the E-92 set, which also has a few different backs itself.  There were 50 cards from this set, which was issued in 1909.  These cards came with candy products – I think the others are Croft’s Cocoa, Dockman and Sons, and Nadja Caramel.  The different colors here is in fact historically accurate, unlike the Broad Leaf blue cards above.

3 players are in both of these sets – 3 carryovers from yesterday’s post; Cobb, Crawford, and Eddie Collins.  There’s only one photo to pick from this set – unlike the T206 where some players have 5 or 6 photo variations.

Panini Golden Age Mini comparisons – Broad Leaf backs

Like many of the retro products that are meant to pay tribute (or profit off of, depending on your view) to tobacco era cards, Panini’s Golden Age set features mini parallels of the base set with multiple different types of card backs.  As with many of those products, I think there are probably too many.  But at least with this product, those card backs are based on a few real old-school card backs.

Broad Leaf backs – T206

The Broad Leaf minis are the most common – you’ll get a brown one in about 80% of packs.  I think the blue ones are 1 or 2 per box.

The Broad Leaf back design used was part of the T-206 set otherwise known as “the Monster”.  Issued in 1909 and through 1911, T-206 cards came with multiple different advertising backs, depending on which pack of cigarettes the cards came from.  Panini has them in both blue and brown card backs, but I think they only exist in brown in the T-206 set.  There are also two versions – “Broad Leaf 350” depicting 350 different card subjects, and the rarer “Broad Leaf 460” noting that many cards.

5 players – Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, Eddie Collins, Ed Cicotte and Chick Gandil – have cards in T-206 and in this product – so I thought I’d do a side-by-side comparison here.  There are a few different cards for most of these players in the T206 set, so I just picked the one I recognized the most.

I’m not positive, but that Cobb card kind of looks like it’s from his Philadelphia Athletics days.

Cobb’s Hall of Fame teammate, Sam Crawford, is the all-time Triples Leader and an under-appreciated player from that era.

Eddie Collins, a fellow member with Cobb of the 3,000-hit club, is also in the T206 set.  Collins was with Philadelphia (the A’s) at the time of the T-206 set.  Eddie was quite the young lad compared to his Panini card – when he was with the White Sox.

Last were 2 of Eddie’s teammates.  Gandil and Cicotte were both banned from the game for their role in the 1919 World Series fix.  It makes sense that they are the two Black Sox in this set.  Gandil was the ring leader and Cicotte, as the team’s ace, was the guy the gamblers really needed in on the fix.

Panini Golden Age – checking out the base cards

Now that I’ve finished opening my box of Panini Golden Age, here’s a look at some of the base cards.  I haven’t had time to get a want list up on this stuff, and I’m not sure if it would matter – I haven’t seen too many bloggers write about this product.  I’m behind on getting back to people on trades anyways 🙂

I can kind of link each scan below to the next one, so that makes it kind of interesting.

This is a primarily baseball set, I think about 75% is of baseball players.  But there are two non-baseball “themes” the cards advertised.  The first was cards of the Three Stooges.  Supposedly these are the first cards of Larry, Moe and Curly. Another cool option to get into this set would have been Abbott and Costello, being a baseball set and all!

 

Another group of three was the focus of the other non-baseball theme.  There are quite a few cards of horse racing legends – Triple Crown winners from horses to jockeys to owners.  There’s even an autographed insert of the three living Triple Crown jockeys (Cauthen, Turcotte, and Jean Cruguet).  I don’t have Cruguet or some of the others yet, but here’s six of them.

I can connect this back to baseball pretty easily.  From horse racing’s Triple Crown to baseball’s version of that feat.  There are five Triple Crown winners in this set – Cobb, Williams, Hornsby, Foxx, Robinson and Yastrzemski.  This would be a cool theme to base a card set on, by the way.  There are contractual rights here, but if you pulled it all together that would be neat.  Panini has a Nap Lajoie card in the product – a relic – just not a base card, plus they have some teammates from Joe Medwick and Lou Gehrig.  Chuck Klein is another player from that era.  Mickey Mantle would be tough, I’m sure, and the others are either really old (Paul Hines, Tip O’Neill) or still active (Miguel Cabrera).

Ty Cobb is one of those players, and he used to be the All-Time Hit King.  Until Pete Rose passed him in 1985.  There are 3 members of the Big Red Machine in this set – Rose, Bench and Perez.

Rose is also on baseball’s banned list.  And this set also features the whole Black Sox team.  I got seven of the infamous 8, and I did get a mini of Lefty Williams, so here they are.

Eddie Collins was on that 1919 White Sox team – he eventually made the Hall of Fame after notching over 3,000 hits.  Here’s his card and a few other Hall of Famers from this set.  Burleigh Grimes is a pretty cool name here – one you don’t see a lot – the last legal spitballer.

From Hall of Fame players, there are two Hall of Fame broadcasters.  Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek were both good players, but they won the Ford Frick award in their post-baseball careers.

From them, I’ll move back away from baseball.  Broadcasters report on the game as it happens – but these guys investigated and reported on Watergate while it was happening.

OK, the last couple were pictures I couldn’t really link in.  There are three more Hall of Fame Tigers in the set (other than Cobb), I thought that was cool.  And there are a few athletes outside of baseball that I thought had pretty cool cards.  I’m a former high school mile runner, and the Jim Ryun card is particularly cool.

2012 Panini Golden Age box break

I ordered just one of these boxes; in hindsight, I enjoyed opening these enough that I could have justified 2 boxes.  Instead I’m buying some of the inserts and other cards on eBay, so that’s cool.  As with most of the retro sets I’ve opened, I like a lot of things about this set.  The base cards aren’t based off of any particular set, but they do have a nice design and a tobacco era feel.  The inserts are pretty cool. Though I wish you got a couple more per box, I’d rather just have 5 inserts and 2 hits than 4x that many and water it down.  It’s kind of cool getting an insert and thinking it is a tough pull!

My idea / suggestion for this product – the Golden Age idea is certainly painted with a broad brush.  There are athletes from as early as the 1890’s, and as late as the 1970’s.  This is the first year Panini has done this, and I understand the business idea behind this, but wouldn’t parceling this out over a few years be really neat?  For example, if the first year of Panini Golden Age had a them from the “tobacco era” for baseball cards – 1890 through 1920 or so.  Then in year 2, you did the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Then, follow that up with the 1940’s and 1950’s, and you could wrap it up with the 60’s and 70’s.  That would be a cool way to do it, and I’d certainly be in for that!

Still, for a set where Panini doesn’t have license, I can’t complain.  This box was less than 70 bucks delivered, and I had a fun time opening it up.

First up – here’s the box topper.  These are the Ferguson Bakery pennants.  They fit perfectly into the 4-card Ultra Pro pages, so that’s good.  There are yellow and blue versions (no rarer than the other) and you also could have pulled a 5 x 7 movie poster card.  I’m going to try to collect these, so I’m glad I got a pennant instead of the movie.  In person, these are really cool – the pennants are made with felt and the picture is embedded in a neat way.

Here’s 20 of the 24 the mini parallels I got, so you can get a feel for what the set looks like.  I’ll do a post tomorrow showing off some of the base cards.

Here are the different card backs you can get, which are modeled after the card backs from a few different tobacco-era sets.

There is one insert that doesn’t have any basis in previous baseball sets.  Headlines is a newspaper-themed set that covers some of the bigger news moments from the era covered by the Golden Age product.

The 2 other inserts you can get are based on the 1934-36 Play Ball set and the 1907 Newark Evening News.  I got Brooks Robinson and Hayne Mansfield in the Play Ball set, plus Joe Garagiola for the Newark Evening insert.

Finally, here’s the hits.  The relic set is the Museum Relic set – I got something from the great Charlie Chaplin.  These are interesting, not sure if I’ll be keeping this one or not.

My autograph was one I will be keeping – Ron Turcotte, the jockey who rode Secretariat to horse racing history.

Below are the “stats” for the box.

24 packs per box * 6 cards per pack + 1 box topper +1 extra card = 146 cards

112 of the 146 card base set (76.7% set completion)

2 doubles

1 Ferguson Bakery Pennants Yellow (B. Dickey)

18 Minis, Broad Leaf Brown

3 Minis, Croft’s Candy Red

1 Mini, Broad Leaf Blue

1 Mini, Croft’s Candy Blue

1 Mini, Ty Cobb King of Tobacco

2 Headlines

2 Batter Up

1 Newark Evening World Supplements

1 Historic Signatures (R. Turcotte)

1 Museum Age Memorabilia (C. Chaplin)

2012 Panini Golden Age overview

Like I said a few posts ago, I really should go back to posts on my Topps project.  I’m actually done opening up 1997 and 1998, so knocking out posts for 1997 would be a good way to pass the time on this blog until Heritage gets released.  Should-a, could-a, would-a.  I bought a box of Panini Golden Age in a couple of weeks ago, and had fun opening.  It has retro set inserts.  I’m a sucker for retro sets.  I particularly like when the basis is(are) set(s) I don’t know much about and thus can learn more about them.  So here’s a series of posts about Panini Golden Age.  Interestingly, the posts I’m going to use as a “template” for this product are 2011 Topps Lineage – a set that has its own design (for better or worse), but has insert sets based on older, oddball card sets.

146 cards in the set.  This product seems geared as Panini’s version of Allen & Ginter – mostly baseball, with some Americana and athletes from other sports included.  The difference is these are all retired players and older historical figures.

• Subsets: None.
• Set Design: The set itself has the look and feel of a Tobacco era design, but doesn’t have any lineage to a previous set.  There is a light cream color border surrounding an oval, black and white image.  The player name and position (or figure’s name and relevance) are in a gold-colored box at the bottom, with a red Panini Golden Age logo just above that.
• Packs: Cards are available in 6-card hobby packs, running around $3 SRP per pack.
• Rookies: N/A – it’s a retired players only set.
• First & Last Active Player:  Ty Cobb and Ed Cicotte both made their debut for the Detroit Tigers in 1905.  Cobb’s debut (August 30) was two days earlier than Cicotte – they were minor league teammates.  It’s worth noting two things – first, Nap Lajoie isn’t in the base set, but he has an insert and a relic card, and he debuted in August, 1896.  Also, if you include athletes, not just baseball players, Battling Nelson is in the base set and made his professional boxing debut in 1896 at the age of 14.  The last active player in the set is Vida Blue, who finished his playing career on October 2, 1986 – just outlasting Tom Seaver (September 19) and Pete Rose (August 17) who finished up their playing careers the same season.  Similar asterisks go here – Gary Carter, who finished his career in 1992, has a memorabilia card but no base card.  Also, Richard Petty is in the base set; he competed in his final NASCAR Race at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 1992.
• Variations: 25 of the cards have picture variations; the variants come about 2 per case and have an announced print run of 92.  There is also a white border parallel of those 25 variations that had an announced print run of 10.  I guess that means the white border variations come 1 every 4-5 cases.
• Hall of Fame:There are 44 (or 46) baseball Hall of Famers in this set:
  • Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, Eddie Collins, Burleigh Grimes, Dizzy Dean, Rogers Hornsby, Jimmy Fox, Arky Vaughn, Charlie Gehringer, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Early Wynn, Buck Leonard, Ralph Kiner, Bill Dickey, Eddie Mathews, Hal Newhouser, Stan Musial, Phil Rizzuto, Bob Feller, Whitey Ford, Red Schoendienst, Al Kaline, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Bill Mazeroski, Willie McCovey, Warren Spahn, Jim Bunning, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Luis Aparicio, Earl Weaver, Harmon Killebrew, Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Frankie Frisch, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Nolan Ryan, Reggie Jackson
  • if you count Ford Frick winners, Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek give you two more.
  • Nellie Fox, Gary Carter, Brooks Robinson, Billy Williams, Yogi Berra, Harry Heilman, Honus Wagner and Nap Lajoie are included as inserts in the product.
  • Banned list guys Pete Rose, Joe Jackson and the rest of the 1919 Black Sox are included in the set.

The hobby box black and red background with a big boxed “Panini Golden Age” logo in red with a gold border.  The logo for the National Baseball Hall of Fame is also featured on the box, along with a bit of advertising saying you’ll find stuff from athletes and newsmakers from the “Golden Age of America”, which apparently encompasses anything from the early 1900’s to 1979.

Parallel Sets

All but one of the full parallel sets issued in this product are mini cards.  There is one mini card per pack – with 6 different backs.  These back differences generally pay tribute to the different backs that tobacco era cards had.  The “common” insert is the Broad Leaf brown backs – the font and design in the same fashion as “Broad Leaf cigarettes” backs from the famous T206 set.  There is also a red Croft’s Candy back, which pays tribute to the E92 set issued to promote candy by Allen & Croft Co. from Philadelphia.  The Broad Leaf and Croft’s backs also come in versions with blue ink.  There is also a back that says “Ty Cobb King of the Smoking Tobacco World”, which pays tribute to the very rare Cobb/Cobb T206 card which was a promotion for a Ty Cobb brand of tobacco.  There are also two types of 1/1 parallels – a black border, Panini logo back mini, and a full size black parallel.

• Broad Leaf Brown Minis – 146 cards.
• Croft’s Candy Red Minis – 146 cards
• Broadleaf Blue Minis – 146 cards
• Croft’s Candy Blue Minis – 146 cards
• Ty Cobb Minis – 146 cards.  The king of the Smoking Tobacco World!
• Panini Black Mini – 146 cards (#/1)
• Aqueous Black – 146 cards (#/1)

There is also a partial parallel set of cards #141-146.  As mentioned above, this same parallel is also available for the 25 picture variations, though there are only 10 of those in existence.

• White Border – 46 cards (#/58)

Insert sets

The inserts of this set pay tribute to various oddball sets from the past.

• Newark Evening World Supplement – 25 cards (1:24)
  • This set really reaches to find an old, oddball set.  It honors the 1907 Newark Evening World Supplement set, a large inset (7.5″ x 11″) included as a supplement to the Newark newspaper.  That set featured 15 cards from the Newark Sailors minor league team.
• Batter-Up – 25 cards (1:12)
  • This pays homage to a much more famous set – the 1934-1936 Batter-Up cards.  These cards were issued by National Chicle and are Die-Cut around the top half of the player’s silhouette so that they fold over and you can prop up – the same way Topps Stand-ups cards do.
• Headlines – 15 cards (1:12)
  • These aren’t based on anything – they are famous headlines from the “Golden Age” time period.

• Honus Wagner T206 Reprint – 1 cards (1 per case)
  • A reprint of one of the 2 most famous baseball cards in existence.

Box Topper

Every box comes with a topper – but there are two types of potential box toppers.  One is in the theme of an old odd-ball set, the other is more of an Americana type set.

• Ferguson Bakery Pennants – 48 cards
  • This carries the same design as a pennant set produced back around World War I that has been attributed to being included with a 5¢ loaf of Peerless Bread from Ferguson Bakery in Boston.  From what I’ve read, the Ferguson part is in dispute a bit, but that’s what any card catalogs have this set list as.  The original pennants were about 6 inches long, while these were made smaller to fit into the boxes.  Panini created both blue and yellow versions of each “card”.  From production numbers, these are much more common than the Movie poster box toppers.
• Movie Poster (regular cards #/60, memorabilia cards #/99)
  • No card set throwback here – these 5 x 7 box toppers display an old school movie poster on one half and a “Now Showing” promotional wording on the other half.  There are memorabilia versions and cards without relics – the ones with memorabilia are actually more common.

Relics and Autographs

• Historic Signatures – 50 cards (1:24)
• Historic Cut Signatures – 10 cards (#/1 to #/3)
• Triple Crown Winners Tribute Autograph – 1 card (#/20)
• Museum Age Memorabilia – 40 cards (1:24)
• The movie posters described above.

Promotion. Original Buyback cards from the 1930’s and 1940’s (Goudey and Play Ball, I believe) at a rate of one per case. They aren’t stamped or anything – just inserted directly into packs.  The biggest card pulled was a 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth.

A look back at 1934-36 Batter Up

Next up in the line of older sets that are re-done for Panini Golden Age is the 1934-36 Batter Up set.

192 cards in the set.

• Set Design: The cards measure 2-3/8″ x 3″.  They are die-cut and blank-backed with black and white photos that come in a number of different tints.  The cards can be folded over to stand and display.  The background can be seen on these (unlike the stand-up cards Topps did in 1964), but the background is tinted out.
• Packs: National Chicle issued these cards in 1-card packs (1¢).  There were two series.  Cards #1-80 are the low series (pack on the right above), cards #81-192 (pack on the left) are the high series.  The high numbers are harder to find.
• Hall of Fame: There are 36 Hall of Famers in this set.
  • Al Lopez, Carl Hubbell, Bill Terry, Jim Bottomley, Rick Ferrell, Pie Traynor, Lloyd Waner, Arky Vaughn, Lefty Gomez, Earl Averill, Mickey Cochrane, Mel Ott, Jimmie Foxx, Bill Dickey, Lefty Grove, Joe Cronin, Frankie Frisch, Al Simmons, Rogers Hornsby, Ted Lyons, Rabbit Maranville, Charlie Gehringer, Tony Lazzeri, Hank Greenberg, Dizzy Dean, Hack Wilson, Heinie Manush, Goose Goslin, Fred Lindstrom, Luke Appling, Ernie Lombardi, Gabby Hartnett, Billy Herman, Joe Medwick, Leo Durocher, Chuck Klein
• Last Active player: I believe it’s Luke Appling, who finished his 20-year White Sox career in 1950.  He played both games of a double-header on October 1st of that year.
• First Active player: Rabbit Maranville, who was the answer on the other side (last active player) in the Ferguson Bakery pennants I did yesterday.  Maranville is the only player in both sets.  Maranville started his career in 1912 for the Boston Braves
• Variations: There are a number of different color tints.  Purple, black, blue, green, brown, and red in the low series, with similar colors in the high series (but no red or purple).

A look back at the 1916 BF2 Ferguson Bakery Pennants

Yesterday I looked at the first set copied in the recent Panini Golden Age product.  Today we’ll go a few years forward to the set designated as BF2 in the baseball card catalogs – a set also known as the Ferguson Bakery Pennant set.

There are 2 pennant sets from this time period attributed to Ferguson Bakery, a bakery in the Boston area.  However the reading that I did on the Net54 Baseball Forum makes me think the more common set actually wasn’t a product of that bakery.

There was a promotion from that bakery where photo cards (called “coupons”) were included with a 5¢ bread loaf.  You could send in 50 of those cards and get either a pillow top or a premium pennant.  The Advertisement is below (thanks to Vintage Cubbies for the photo).

Here’s an example of one of the pennants – thanks to the Net54 forum for this, too.  I just joined that and it’s a great place for info on stuff like this!

Those premium pennants are not the BF2 pennants – they are far more rare, with only 8 known to exist.  Also, at 9″ x 25″, are much bigger.  They clearly look similar though, and I think the leap has been that since the premium pennants must also be associated with Ferguson.  So no one knows for sure where the BF2 sets came from, but they’re noted as such, and that’s the set that Panini was copying with the box topper insert in the Golden Age product.

There are 97 pennants in the BF2 set.

• Set Design: They measure just under 3″ x  6″.  The felt pennants can be found in multiple different colors, and feature a photo inset that’s 1-1/4″ x 1-3/4″.  The photo included is the same photo used for the Sporting News M101-4 set from that time period.
• Packs: As mentioned above, it’s not really known how these pennants were obtained – though it’s currently listed as a Ferguson Bakery product.
• Hall of Fame: There are 23 Hall of Famers in this set.
  • Harry Hooper, Eddie Collins, Charles Comiskey, Ed Walsh, Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, Hughie Jennings, Home Run Baker, Nap Lajoie, Connie Mack, George Sisler, Walter Johnson, Johnny Evers, Rabbit Maranville, Rube Marquard, Mordecai Brown, Joe Tinker, John McGraw, Grover Alexander, Chief Bender, Max Carey, Honus Wagner, Miller Huggins
• Last Active player: Hall of Famer Rabbit Maranville was the last active player from this set.  Near the end of his career in 1934, he broke a bone in his leg in an exhibition, and was forced to sit out the entire season.  He came back in 1935, playing in just 23 games for the Boston Braves.  His final game was September 29th of that year, against the New York Giants.  He was the only HOF-er that day, but the Giants were managed by future HOF-er Bill Terry.  Maranville beat out Joe Judge, who finished up the year before.
• First Active player: Another HOF-er, Nap Lajoie, who played his first game for the Phillies in 1896.  1916 was his final season.
• Other note: Oscar Stanage is in this set, and he was also included in the Newark Evening set I featured yesterday.  Quite an interesting coincidence – nearly 90 years later, who would know Panini would put out a product paying tribute to both sets, causing me to notice (and post about) this completely random, useless and awesome tidbit of info!
• Variations: The pennants can be found in many different colors.