Sunday, August 27, 2017

Here's something you don't see every day

Summer is flying by, and I've spent very little time here on the blog. Best laid plans, I guess.

Now that I'm sitting down to post something, I figured I could play off of my own scarcity, and show you something else you don't see every day: 1972 Classic Cards.

This set consists of four series, each of 30 cards. They are catalogued as a 1972 issue. The cards themselves, are on a thin, cream coloured cardboard, and were issued by a company out of Flint, MI. And honestly, that's nearly everything I know about them. You can find a checklist online easily enough -- the set contains a lot of pre-war hall-of-famers.

And of course, the set contains George Gibson.

I added this one to my collection sometime back before 2008 -- back when Yahoo had an auction site (I'm assuming they no longer do). Cost me $15 to buy the entire series and I couldn't have been happier at the time. This series came with Wagner, Lajoie and a few others. I kept Gibson and Bill O'Hara (another Canadian), and sold/traded/gave every other card away.


And that was the last time I saw a 1972 Classic Cards Gibson for sale. Actually, that's the only time I've ever seen this card for sale. At times I have seen other cards from the set for sale, but not often. I'm sure this card isn't that rare -- I'm sure it's just one of those sets that nobody figures anyone wants, and they don't bother to try to sell them. But honestly, I don't know.

If you have any of these cards, or know more about the set, drop a line in the comments. I'd love to learn more.

7 comments:

  1. That has to be a good feeling, knowing you have it and that they just aren't easy to find.

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    1. Indeed. And at the time, I didn't actually know Yahoo Auctions was a thing, so I signed up, bid, won, paid, and half-expected never to see the cards or my money again. All these years later, and I'm definitely glad I took that gamble.

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    2. I couldn't say what, but I know that I picked up a few things on Yahoo auctions. I didn't know it was gone, but it's not like I bothered to look either.

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    3. Well, my curiousity finally got the better of me. According to Wikipedia, the Canadian and US sections of the site were closed on June 16, 2007 (which means John was right that they closed before 2008 :))

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Auctions

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  2. I guess it's a good thing you got the set when you did! This looks like the kind of set that might have only been available through the back of an ad on a magazine. If that were the case, there might not be a lot of these out there, especially if not too many sets were purchased. And if sales weren't great, the person/company making them might not have produced them for very long. Whatever the case may be, it was still neat to see.

    I remember getting quite a few things from Yahoo auctions in/or around 2000-ish, it was a pretty good auction site in it's early days. I thought that it had gone belly up earlier than 2008 though.

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    1. I consider 'now' my second time collecting Gibson cards. The first time was from 2005-2008, so really, anytime between 2005 and 2008 is when I got this. I'd have to really dig into some email archives to find a more precise date.

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