(LOT 1356)
The Carload That Lasted a Lifetime – Huge Hoard of 1961 through 1968 Topps Mostly Vending (Over 6,400 Cards)
In the late 1970s, a young enterprising Chicago area collector decided to place some ads in local area newspapers hoping to dig up cards for his collection. A most unexpected call came from Michigan City, Indiana unearthing a find of over 35,000 1962 through 1968 Topps, mostly vending, quality baseball cards. It seems an older collector from Indiana had been saving/hoarding Topps cards for that 7-plus year period. It was time to pass it on. A deal was made and our young entrepreneur has been slowly and methodically supplementing his income and collection habit for over the past 40 years out of that carload. Most of his efforts were spent maximizing return on stars. And then in the '90s, when professional grading came into vogue, he sent thousands of cards to PSA. Over the decades, much of the collection was dispersed via phone, trades, eBay and even visiting shows. About 12,000-plus cards were delivered to our offices, mostly void of bigger ticket stars, but loaded with Leaders, A/S cards, checklists, variations, rookies and the usual more desirable "semi" stars (McClain, Conigliaro, Carty, Katt, Horton, Colavito, Holtzman, Lolich, etc. including yet to be inducted Hall of Famers like Torre, Cepeda, LaRussa, etc).

As is the expected case with such hoards, many cards were O/C or miscut and we culled through, without overly decimating the integrity of the offering, and removed them from this auction lot. What we were left with is mostly excellent or better cards with only about 15-20% being considered O/C by today's standard. There are no miscuts. And there are easily several thousands of cards that would minimally be Near-Mint or better. If not for PSA's recent price increases, the winning bidder would be spending the entire fall and winter filling out PSA submission sheets to truly "capitalize" on this offering.

The breakdown is as follows: 1961 Topps - 754: 1962 Topps – 1,456 with numerous green tints, and we surmise there is a partial Master set of over 500 different in this year; 1963 Topps – 107; 1964 Topps – 636; 1965 Topps – 761; 1966 Topps – 730; 1967 Topps – 717; and 1968 Topps – 1,269 which includes a near-set sans stars. Over 6,000 total cards (6,430 by our count). All are in individual Card Saver sleeves and in numerical order for easy distribution. We are very conservative in our evaluation of this lot and feel very strongly about the huge upside of this acquisition. Hopefully our full-page catalog photo of some of the more desirable cards illustrates condition appropriately for optimal bidding.

ADDITIONAL SHIPPING CHARGES OF $125 FOR THIS LOT 

MIN BID $2,000
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