Always enjoy seeing your salesman samples Anthony. Almost as much as your pack display

I have only these 2 salesman samples. I'm always looking for any of these that include either Pete Runnels or Mickey Vernon.

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Or this one….

Or..

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Or

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Lummis

‘59 Armour Meats

Mark - love the minor leaguers!

Here are a couple of Seaver rarities from better known sets -- the 1973 Topps comic and 1973 Topps pinup.

Outstanding! I basically gave up on my Topps "Seaver as a Met" collection as completion was virtually impossible thanks to those two.

Byron "By" Speece, a submarine pitcher, began his pro career in the minors in 1922 at age 25 and finished his career with the Seattle Rainiers in 1945 at age 48! I collect his cards because he pitched for the 1924 WS Champion Washington Senators, his only year with this team. After the 1924 season, Clark Griffith shrewdly traded Speece and another "no-name" player to Cleveland for Stan Coveleski who greatly helped the Senators win the 1925 AL pennant. He pitched for Cleveland in 1925 and very briefly in 1926 and for the Phillies in 1930. All of the rest of his years were spent in the minors.

Try to suspend your amazement, but this time it's not Mays.

53/54 Briggs Meats Grasso. Today PSA shows Pop 1, but that's because they haven't updated for this one yet, with the grade just posting today.

Fun fact: grasso means "fat" in Italian. As the saying goes in Rome, "after a fat pope comes a skinny one", although Newton was never the Bishop of Rome.

Here are some hard-to-find items from my Johnny Bench collection.

Time for another Mays Bazooka box. This time from 1961, although it’s missing the tabs, so woefully short of a truly complete box. PSA pop=1.

1964 Orioles Martin Family Night.

A personal favorite, 1964 boy scouts world champion cardinals. I love the idea of cards gives out as an incentive to join the boy scouts. Especially only scouts in the St. Louis area. Makes for a super rare type card 60 years later.
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67 Bench is a grail.

Not sure how HTF this one is, but 65 Team Issue Carlton.

This is kind of a companion to Lucas' 1964 Boy Scouts card. It's a 1969 Boy Scouts card of Tom Seaver. I don't have a scan of the back, but it urges scouts to sign up their friends, just like Lucas' card. But it doesn't offer any reward. I guess the Boy Scouts got stingy by 1969, or maybe they were just more generous in St. Louis.

They should've added "You'll get nothing...and like it!!!" to the layout. :eek:

I should've mentioned the front, it says: To a world champion scout. Good luck. Red Schoendienst.

Each cardinal wrote their own sentence on the front

But you are still checking Larry :)

What am I checking for?

1970 topps super Johnny Bench square corner

Time for some Post complete panels. This one from 1961. Basically the complete backside of the cereal box. PSA has this one down as pop 5.

This Ryan premium is about 5 x 7 and tough as heck to find.

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All the Rodine HOF postcards and premiums are rare; if anyone has any others I'd love to see them and finish the checklist:

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One of a trio of really tough 1951 Hallicrafters premiums (the others are Rosen and Lemon as singles):

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This one is real interesting (well, to me). The first time I found one of these, I thought it was some sort of Exhibit proof. It has the same artwork and is not a reprint but oversized and on lighter stock.

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Fast-forward several years and I find another, with a very enlightening twist:

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This one is post-marked in February 1948 from Brooklyn (where I guess Holmes lived), 2x signed and inscribed by Holmes. The ink on the front doesn't match the ink on the back. I am now thinking it is some sort of autograph request mail reply card that Holmes had ESCO manufacture for him.

Not truly rare in terms of the issue itself, but the 1954 All-Star photo pack Banks isn't particularly easy to find.

I have only seen a handful https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...550938f365.jpg

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Elston Howard
 

Here's a couple of Elston Howard items that are unusual, I think:

Time for the Canucks to get their 15 mins of glory.

This was inserted into boxes of sugar crisp cereal. Naturally, most of them were separated into individual cards. Pretty sure Fred helped me find this one.

1962 Post Canadian inserts complete sheet with my man Mays. PSA Pop 1.

Going with the 1962 Post complete panel today, with both Mays and Banks. PSA Pop 2.

And another 62 Post complete panel. This time with just 3 players, including Mays and Killebrew. PSA Pop 4.

I’ll skip over the remaining half dozen Post complete panels, as they get a bit tedious at times. Here is the 1964 Meadowgold complete panel. PSA Pop 8. They came in blue, green, and brown. I also have the blue, but not the brown. Instead of being featured on cereal boxes, this one came on milk cartons.

Sorry for this being a modern issue but these were available at Sam's Club as I got a couple of these, I never seen them in the grocery stores as 2 card panels. Here is a complete 8 card panel/box from Sam's Club

And here is the 1964 Meadowgold complete milk carton. It’s just a little too big to fit into the PSA jumbo slab, so we don’t have any official stats, but they definitely seem rare.

Here are some 1968 Kahns full strips.

1964 Sports Heroes stickers Mays. PSA Pop 3.

The individual sports heroes are hard to find, so I assume the complete sheets are even harder. These two with Mays, McCovey, and Cepeda, among others. Just a hair too big to fit into PSA’s jumbo holders, so no way to get an official pop count. Pretty sure Fred helped me find these.

1960 Darigold Farms #6 Curt Roberts Spokane Indians
 

Curtis B. "Curt" Roberts. Second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1954-1956. First black player in Pittsburgh Pirates history. 128 hits and 1 home run over 3 MLB seasons. Also played for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1947-1950.

PSA has graded only one Roberts and a total of five cards from this set:

George, your showing your scarce 1960 Darigold Farms card reminds me that these cards with the superfluous tab still attached are even scarcer.

Shouldn't the Darigold Farms cards without the tab be graded as "handcut" or "without tab"? How do the graders decide what sets to add these designations to? Or are they just ignorant of the Darigold Farms tabs and unable to detect a handcut edge?

Very cool, Val. Is that Hondo's earliest card? I believe PSA has also graded a Frank Howard, but I don't know whether the tab is still attached. My guess would be that PSA graded my card without realizing tabs were possible, but since there is nothing on the tab, I could also see them grading it without a tab as though it were a strip card. I'll leave the argument regarding how strip cards should be graded and labeled to others. I'm agnostic regarding the importance/necessity of noting "hand cut" on cards that were made to be hand cut.

Howard is in 1960 Topps.

Time for another bazooka box! 1965 this time. Mays is pop 1.

If I've shown this before, I apologize. When you show something this rare that you cut off the box yourself back in the day, it makes you feel pretty good. Of course we didn't think value back then, just another card for the collection.

Time for one last Bazooka box from my Mays collection. This time from 1968, although it’s missing the flaps on one side, so it’s a “complete box”.

PSA pop 4.

A trio…

1969 Globe Imports checkerboard back Mays. PSA pop 4.