1951 Bowman #232: Nellie Fox

Big acquisition in today's day and age. Nellie Fox's RC books for $250 in my outdated price guide. This means $25 for me, but it's more like $75 in reality today. I found this for $35.29 with shipping and taxes. Not too bad for me. This leaves only 3 cards left to complete the low-number set of 252 cards: #31 R.Campanella, #88 E.Robinson, and #126 B.Thomson. This also leaves only 30 cards total to complete the entire set of 324 cards. Just need 6 more cards to break 300. Not bad for the 2nd most prized Topps/Bowman set of all time.

 

1951 Bowman Additions

     Leading the pack for today's acquisition is HOF'er Early Wynn. Still feeling the impact of the modern boom era, I had to pay 20% BV for this one. As a point of reference, I would have looked for a 10% BV purchase previously. The other 2 acquisitions help to fill out my collection and bring it up to over 90% completion. My 1-year goal is to complete the low-number set (#1-252), which is missing only 4 more cards. After that, I'd like to complete over 300 of the 324 cards (only need 7 more).

 

Bunches of New 52T's

I recently acquired a bunch of 52T's. This is not a set that I've ever put much focus into. At 88 cards, I'm still only 21% into this set. All of the rest of my 1950's Topps sets are above 90% except 57T, which is at 52%. I think one of the big reasons I've lagged on this set is that 25% of the set is nearly unattainable as high numbers. That is without regard to whether they are stars or commons. For the rest of the 75% of the set there are also unattainable cards, but that wasn't as much of a deterrent since that's typical for any vintage set. Another factor was that commons for this set were priced much higher than 51T or 53T commons, so I was led in those directions. The premium probably came from people's beliefs that this was the first Topps set, but I never considered this to be true. Topps produced a 104-card set (106 w/ variations) in 1951. For me, that was enough to make the 52T premium unwarranted. Anyway, I'm running out of other cards to purchase so I found these cards as a decent price. Here they are.

1953 Bowman B&W Series Down to 1

The 53B set no longer holds the prestige among vintage sets that it once held. As recent as 5 years ago, the complete set outvalued all other Topps/Bowman sets except 51B and 52T. I see that 53T-56T have now all pulled ahead of the 53B set. The 57T set is now tied with the 53B color series by itself. Combined with the B&W series, the 53B set is now the 7th most valuable Topps/Bowman set. One of the things that always got to me about this set was trying to figure out whether the Color series or the B&W series came out first. I had finally decided that the B&W series came out first since it seemed to make sense chronologically--like televisions, we had B&W before Color. Looking at the card below, I have just changed my mind. Usually, many cards depict players wearing uniforms of the previous year. Below, Bill Miller is wearing a 1903-1953 Yankees Anniversary patch. It's pretty cool to think that going into 50 years, the Yankees were about to win their 5th straight World Series. Anyways, these B&W cards must have been release well into the 1953 season. I'm thinking that Bowman started running out of money after producing their first 160 cards in Color and had to resort to B&W in order to produce their final 64 cards. If you combine the Color and B&W series, you get 224 cards, which is the same number of cards Bowman produced in their 1954 set. They probably decided to renumber their B&W cards because they were B&W and not Color. I don't think the difference should be enough to renumber the series. So instead of treating these as low-series cards, I will now treat these as high-series cards. That also seems to make sense because it's typically the high-series cards that command a premium. I should have seen it before. My 2018 Beckett Almanac says, "producing the 1953 color series forced Bowman to issue this [series] in black and white". Anyway, this B&W #54 Bill Miller addition brings my overall 53B to within 2 cards of completion. I'm missing one B&W card and a Color Mickey Mantle. One I'll probably get this year and the other I'll probably never get. 

 

What You Buy is What You Sell

     When I first started collecting vintage, I would often think about how cool it'd be to be a dealer of vintage cards. I would often wonder what it'd be like to have vintage extras that I wanted to get rid of, but I could barely imagine owning a single vintage card for my own collection. Times have obviously changed, but I still think it's pretty cool when I have a couple of extra 51B's that I need to go. Through collecting these vintage cards, I somehow continue to come up with doubles due to mistakes on my checklists or through purchasing lots. Every once in a while, I find a good deal on an upgrade, and decide to go for it. Good deals are not to be found very often these days it seems. When I looked at these two cards below, I was immediately interested in the Jerry Coleman card, which I thought was the more valuable card, but it's actually not commanding as much of a premium as the Carrasquel RC to my surprise. Anyway, coming to the conclusion that what I buy is going to end up being what I sell continue to contribute to my decisions on what to buy. 

    

     As I continue to sell off my 21st century cards, I have no intention to ever come back into the modern industry and waste my time. I could imagine that hell for some people might be having to list individual cards for sale online while buried under a pile of cards. Jesus once said, "go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me" (Matt 19:21). Imagine living a selfish life for yourself hoarding cards without accepting Jesus as savior for your sins and then living an eternity apart from God in hell with nothing but your cards weighing you down. Buried under a mountain of cards, Satan forces you to list each one individually for sale without breaks, taking pictures, cropping them, uploading them, and writing descriptions non-stop until they're all gone--except that he keeps coming back and pouring more piles of cards over your head while you practically choke beneath them. Sometimes I enjoy listing cards for sale, but at other times it becomes a chore. Listing these 2 cards for sale was fun, but I can't wait to downsize my collection some more. It can be a burden.