Quote:
Originally Posted by GasHouseGang
Another player who's card values always surprised me though, was Stan Musial. His card values never seemed to line up with the legend that he was in the Midwest where I grew up. I guess if he had played on the Yankees for instance, his card values would be higher. But that just means I can afford to collect them.
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I think one of the reason that Musial isn't automatically named in this discussion is because he wasn't in the face of every kid on the east coast throughout most of his career. If you lived in the Midwest you knew his name from the radio broadcasts but the majority of population in the north east had all their own teams. You knew him as an opposing player if you rooted for an NL team but if liked an AL team, well no luck.
In the 40's practically no major card sets were produced. The early 50's saw the dawning of modern post war cards and the early 50's card wars but after Musial's 53 Bowman card he doesn't get his own regular issue card until 1959 (not including his 58 AS card). By then the 50's were about over, the west coast had teams, the Yankees were shown beatable (sometimes) and the Cardinals were not too good. Musial was winding down his career.
I know that a lot of guys in my age range, 40's, who didn't see or hear of players in the 40's and 50's until we started putting sets together missed out on those all important mid 50's Topps and Bowman Stan Musial cards.
I have a friend and fellow collector that learned practically all he knows about the era from collecting cards and couldn't understand why I was so infatuated with Musial. He had heard of him but not seen his greatness.
I think if Musial had regular issue cards throughout his career his standing popularity with today's fans would be higher.
Another reason is he didn't do all the show signings and tours of the 70's and 80's. He had already been signing everything for everyone for decades. You can practically find a Musial autograph on anything and everything. I'm not really an autograph collector but I do like Musial. I realized I have seven items signed by him!
All this to say some of the things that made others of his generation "iconic" didn't seem to happen to Stan the man Musial.
Drew