Alright. We are back with another episode of Smashing Bin.

This is the second time I've had today's guest on. First time in this format, we're gonna be talking about an awesome, awesome card in a bin smashing format, maybe a little atypical that we haven't discussed yet.

But I think this is gonna be fun. You're all gonna really enjoy it. I am joined by Tony. He goes by Southern Collector fourteen. He's got an incredible collection of vintage baseball pre war.

He's got an awesome channel on YouTube that you are gonna need to check out if you're not already. I'll put the link in the show notes. But without further ado, Tony, welcome back, man. How are you?

Thanks, Brett. I appreciate it, man. I'm doing great. And to, get a second call, I guess I didn't screw it up too bad on the first one. So I'm excited to be on here. You you might be the, stacking slabs vintage baseball correspondent.

We need we need we need somebody out there to help educate because I know how passionate this community of collectors is, and it's outside of my lane, but that doesn't mean we can't bring it on stacking slabs and talk about it.

I know it's an area you're super passionate about.

Oh, yeah, man. Anytime you wanna talk, and I'll talk baseball cards and baseball history all day long. So Let's maybe let's maybe start with you just in case anyone out there didn't listen to that, first conversation we had.

Maybe just give the spark notes about how you got so into vintage baseball collecting, and then how why you turn that into kinda your YouTube channel?

Yeah. So unlike today's era, like, if I grew up in today's era, I'd be busting hobby boxes, and my mama would give me $300 or whatever they cost.

You know? And I'd be chasing big cards, and and that's Paul Skene's card would have been, you know, my dream card. And so or maybe some Shohei Ohtani one of one or one of 10 or or something like that.

Well, we didn't have those when I was a kid. So you everything was a base card. Right? So kind of what we aspire to buy to get one day were the things we saw in Beckett price guides, and those were vintage cards.

Those were the ones that cost so much money, and it was the 52 mantles. It was the t two zero six Hannes Wagner. Those were the top of the mountain cards. And, so as a kid, I always aspired to have vintage cards.

So when I went dormant during those college years and through raising kids, when I come back in, I tried to go down the modern hole a little bit. I didn't really understand it well enough, and it I just found I wasn't passionate enough.

And so I went back to my roots, and and I've just, I dove right back into vintage. And then once I did that, man, the other door that opened for me was baseball history.

I started reading books and listening to podcasts and doing that kind of stuff. So so that's what my, YouTube channel is kinda I do some really fun episodes too.

I do some collaborations with a guy named Mike Petty. I I like to have other collectors on like you're doing with me, and we talk about, you know, some of their cool cards.

But I also do, like, I'm about to have an episode where I talk about Ted Williams, and I'm gonna share my Ted Williams cards, but I'm gonna do a dive into his history. And so, you know, they're an hour long.

They're a little longer than just a small, but it's what I enjoy, and I'm just doing it because I enjoy it. I'm definitely not making any money off of it. But it's just just fun. It's a fun way to, enjoy the hobby and build community.

Like I mentioned, I I'm I am not a vintage baseball collector, but I enjoy Tony's, storytelling and the sharing of his collection and how he thinks about building out his collection.

So make sure you go check out his YouTube channel. Let's start with, like, the buying format. This is smashing Ben. I I'm curious since your lane is vintage baseball.

Do you find yourself more following the auctions that are happening across all the marketplaces on a regular basis and zeroing in and, you know, going with auctions to secure cards for your collection, or are you diving into buy it now opportunities, cards that have been sitting, you've been waiting on, and maybe jumping in, or just being more opportunistic, or kinda hybrid of both?

Maybe share kinda from a a vintage baseball perspective kinda how you think about buying formats and what suits you the best. Yeah.

It's a it's a definitely a hybrid. Like, I buy stuff off Facebook from people. I recently bought and this you know, it can be a little bit tricky, but I bought this 1955 signed Jackie Robinson off Facebook, and it was very expensive.

And to buy a card that expensive, you know, and not know the guy, is a little tricky.

You gotta really make sure you vet him. You know? So I do that. I have searches just like everybody else does on eBay that pop up on my emails every day. And so, you know, there's some buy it now possibilities there.

I like the auctions on eBay. I hope they don't change to the new format they're talking about because I like to do Gixen. And then there's the big auction houses, whether it's, Love of the Game or Heritage or Golden or whatever.

I it doesn't matter to me. If it's a card I like, and I'm willing to try and go get it, it fits in one of my lanes, then, yeah, I'm gonna go after it.

You know? I've got different lanes. I love Autograph Vintage. That's my lane. I'm really into the Negro League players. They're hard to find because they didn't have cards.

The only way you find any of their playing days cards, you have to go like we're about to talk about, whether it's a Puerto Rican issue or a, Cuban issue when they played there in the winter leagues, and so they would have a card.

So that's kinda cool to me. Hall of famers, any of that. So there's some there's some lanes there. I love pre war. I love shoe with Joe Jackson, and I've got a pretty good run of his.

So when, you know, they made him eligible for the hall of fame, that was a big deal to my collection. You know? So so, yeah, it's a it's a really cool thing. Ty Cobb, love his stuff. Babe Ruth. And so any of those.

But Jackie Robinson, I think him, he's my main guy. Like, I love collecting Jackie Robinson. So I think so. For so many of us modern collectors, we watch current sports, we listen to current podcasts, and we consume all this content.

We form this opinion and thoughts, and we it gets to this point where we're like, alright, we wanna go collect this player, and that becomes our lane for the vintage crowd and community.

It's almost like you're fueled from what has already happened.

So you've got your lanes, but then you dive into, maybe a documentary or a book or you read an article, and then maybe it opens the door to a lane within vintage baseball prewar that you might not have thought you collect, but you stumble into it.

I'm sure that has transpired just by you talking through all of just the different lanes that you collect and maybe talk about just, like, how much history is an influence on opening those new lanes and deciding what paths you go down.

Yeah. It's a big it's a big part of it.

I mean, when I first jumped back into vintage, I did a player run, and that player was Hank Aaron because I respect him so much for what he did in baseball and the the records he did, but he did it all with dignity in the face of racism and hatred.

And and many people don't realize this, but Hank Aaron is the last, player to ever suit up in Major League Baseball that played in the Negro Leagues.

So he spanned those generations in that era and the gap of, you know, where when he first came in, he would his wife had to come in the colored entrance and sit in the outfield with the colored people.

So, you know, that's how they were treated.

She couldn't sit with the other wives. When they went on the road, when Jackie Robinson came in, he had to find a, black family to stay in a house with, or he had to stay in the in the black hotel.

So, you know, a lot of times, to me, that's heroic because when I played college baseball, my my best times, man, I don't remember the games.

I remember hanging out with my buds and the bus trips and in the hotel at night, the funny stuff.

You know? Got got a guy and got him trapped out in the hall naked and and locked him out in the hallway, and the coach finds him out there banging on the door, and he gets in trouble. You know?

So you do stupid stuff, and you and those are those are building bonds. They didn't have that opportunity. And they still were expected to go out on that field and play and put up numbers and prove they were worthy of being there.

And so that's that's a big deal, man. And so, that that makes them, in my mind, they're worthy to collect. And so but that doesn't mean I don't collect other guys too.

I mean, you know, you go back in the prewar era, those guys, you know, they had to prove they wanted to play because their parents thought baseball players were scoundrels, and they wouldn't let them date their daughters.

And, you know, when they went to a restaurant, they put him in the back because they didn't want people to see baseball players in their restaurant because they were guys that were they didn't wanna work a regular job and you know?

So, yeah, it was it's it's it's there's a lot of history there, and it really gets interesting the more you look into it.

And, definitely, once you do that like, when I got into the Jackie Robinson run, that opened up Larry Doby run because, you know, he was the first guy to play in the American League, black guy.

He came in only a few months after Jackie, and he gets no flowers. There's not a Larry Dobie day. But he put up with all the stuff Jackie Robinson put up with, only he did it in the American League ballparks.

And, you know, end up he's in the hall of fame. The guy was great, and he played with, Satchel Paige, and they he was the first black player to hit a home run-in the world series in 1948 for the Cleveland Indians.

And after that game, when they hit the home run, it looked like they're gonna quench the series, and they come pouring into the locker room, into the clubhouse, and the winning pitcher was a white guy named Steve Gromek, a journeyman, you know, run of the mill pitcher, not in the hall of fame.

He and Larry Dobie embraced in a hug and a happy moment and were cheek to cheek, and the reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer snapped that picture.

And that picture went nationwide. It was a black guy hugging a white guy, and they had their faces, and they were happy.

That was the first time in American history that had ever been seen in the public, and it changed people's, view of of race and how to accept it. Larry Dobie goes back home to New Jersey after winning the world series.

They they have Larry Dobie day and have a parade in his honor. Steve Gromack goes back to Michigan, and there's friends of his that wouldn't shake his hand because he hugged a black man.

And they asked him one of them said, couldn't you just have shook his hand? Why'd you have to hug him? And so that's the that's the era that was happening then.

So to collect those guys' cards, to me, is really cool. I got Steve Gromek cards too, man. And when my grandson is old enough, those will be teaching tools for him. I wanna show him those cards and say, you wanna be like Steve Gromek.

You wanna be like Joe Gordon, the guy that when Larry Doby walked out on the field the first day and didn't know a soul and was in his element, baseball, what he had always done.

He didn't have anybody to warm up with. And five minutes seemed like an eternity until until, Joe Gordon pat him on his shoulder, all star, one MVP for the Yankees, had come over to Cleveland and said, hey, buddy.

You wanna throw? And that sounds like a small thing, but he put himself out there at that moment. He he did a a great thing for Larry, and they became friends and were friends the rest of their lives.

So it's those kind of stories that make those guys worth collecting. So I've got Joe Gordon cards. So my son, Oakley, one day, he's gonna hear those stories.

I'm gonna show him those cards, and they're gonna be teaching tools. Hobby historian over here, Tony. I hope you like storytelling because there's gonna be a lot of it in this episode.

Let's get into this card, and let's also set the stage by saying this isn't a card that was just listed on a marketplace that Tony decided to smash Ben on it.

It's a little bit different. So what I'm gonna do, Tony, is I'm gonna bring up this card on the screen.

And what's fun about this, it is tied together with another conversation that we had, not too long ago, which is from a previous guest who I believe is who you made the deal with. Yes.

Yeah. Jonah. Mhmm. So so I've got the card up right now. What I'll do here is have you introduce the card, and then just get into the story of why this card, how you acquired it, what it means to you, and just just go and keep going.

And then if there's anything interesting that I have a question on, I'll just stop you and ask, but the floor is yours. Alright, man. So buy it now.

Usually, I listen to those episodes that you do. They're great. They usually have to do with eBay purchases, and I've done the buy it now. You know? I I know what that's all about. This is a bin theoretically, but not on eBay.

So just to kinda tell that story, I've heard you talk about the fact that some of your biggest pickups and, you know, you personally, your cards have been through community and and building relationships.

And it's so important to have relationships in this community and because you're gonna find cards that way because people know what you like.

So, this collector, I had built a relationship with him on Instagram, and, he knew that I was big into the Negro League guys and integration guys, and and so we would converse about that.

But this particular card is a nineteen fifty fifty one Tollateros, Josh Gibson card, and there's only 30 of these, around 30 in existence. And that card was produced in Puerto Rico, and they were inside cigarettes.

And so they back then, there was three years of Total Tarros. There was the 4849, 4950, and 5050 ones. But every year, they would also issue, it it looked like a almost like a coloring book, but it was an album.

And inside there, there were paper, and each there was on each page, it'd be, like, six cards on each page, and it would have the outline and say the guy's name.

And so as you got the cards, you would you would glue them to the piece of paper.

And then once the book was filled, I believe you could take it to the store and get a free carton of cigarettes. So what that did was once they got that book, a lot of times those were destroyed.

So it really lessened the amount of cards that were just in circulation. So most cards either have glue residue on the back or have maybe minor paper loss. Mine does. That's why it's a 1.

5 because whenever someone took it off that piece of paper, it peeled a little bit of the white paper off the back. I've got it right here. You can kinda barely make it out, maybe. I don't know if you wanna focus in on that.

It's not that big a deal. But, anyways, that is, that's why I got the 1. 5 designation. But when you're dealing with a card like this, the designation, the grade is not of importance. So, that's the story behind the set.

I had bought some other from him, and he knew I enjoyed that lane. And I was there's Negro League players in that set, and I've got some really cool ones. But this guy now I don't know if you know who Josh gets Josh Gibson is.

So let me tell you a little bit about Josh. Josh Gibson, was a Negro League guy. He was from Pittsburgh. He started playing for the Pittsburgh Crawfords. He played on probably the best Negro League team of all time.

I think it was 1935. But they had him, cool papa Bells on the team, Buck Leonard. Who else was it? But Satchel Paige was their ace, and he's probably one of the best pitchers of all time.

But, you know, pitched when he was in his forties and finally got his chance in the major leagues. But he he is the black Babe Ruth is what they called him and, set all kinds of records, hit for high average, hit home runs.

He won the triple crown two years in the Negro Leagues. So, in May of last year, May of twenty twenty four, Major League Baseball accepted Negro League stats as official Major League stats.

So in May of of twenty twenty four, Josh Gibson became the all time leader in lifetime batting average. He passed Ty Cobb. He also became the all time leader in slugging percentage in OPS passing Babe Ruth.

So not only did he hit for power, he hit for average. If he would have played in the major leagues, he would be one of those names that was a household name, as one of the greatest to ever put on a uniform.

So this card was not even discovered, was not even known to exist until 02/2003. There was a man who went down to Puerto Rico looking for Puerto Rican cards. He was kinda in that Negro League lane, and he went to a big collector.

And this guy had several albums, and this guy kinda tells the story, the guy that bought the who discovered this card, that this guy was kinda he was a little iffy. He would sell his mama if you paid him enough.

When Porter when, when, Roberto Clemente's plane went down when he died in that plane crash in 1971, I believe, or '72, He went out and got parts out of the ocean and tried to sell the parts.

So he was a little like that. So he knew that. He's flipping through the albums, and he'd asked the guy, did they not make any Josh Gibson cards?

Because he had played down there. And there was no Josh Gibson cards really to know exist except one postcard from the mid thirties. And it's a pop one. There's one of one, and it's worth a ton of money.

So the guy said, no. There's not. He said, I was flipping the pages, and I seen a Josh Gibson. He said, and I knew this guy. I couldn't tell him. He said I had to use my poker face, and I kept flipping.

He said, then I get done. I said, how much you want for this album? He found, I think, five Josh Gibsons in that find, and the guy threw out some crazy number he thought he wouldn't do, and he he didn't blink and said, okay.

I'll take it. And so he discovered these cards, man. And so 2,003 of I mean, so these ain't been around a long time.

So I know I'm talking in circles. There has not been a public sale of this card since March of last year before he became the all time leader. So when when I get the phone call from Jonah, and he's like, hey, man.

I I got an idea. I'm like, what's that? He goes, how would you like to buy my Josh Gibson? And I'm like, dude, are you out of your mind? That's your, like, your photo on your Instagram page.

That's your that's your number one fo that's your card. Like, that's your dude. Are you crazy? He goes, well, I got a chance to buy another one. I gotta sell this one to get the money. I said, dude, how much do you want for it?

And he told me I'd never bought a card for 6 figures ever. And and, honestly, couple years ago, to even think about having a card worth that would have blown my mind. And so at first, you know, my first thought is, I can't do that then.

Well, I've heard you talk about this too. You asked me the last time I was on there. How big is consolidation in the in the vintage world? And I said, yeah. You know, people do it a little bit.

Man, at that moment, I ain't got 6 figures in my bank account to buy this card. But what I did have was some big cards that even though they're freaking awesome, freaking awesome, one of them was my 52 mantle.

The card that when I was a kid was the top of the mountain, and I love that card. On my YouTube episode, I think it was my second or third episode that I did, and I called it finding my holy grail.

And I told the story in about and on that video, I say, this is the card that I'll have to decide one day if it goes to my kids or it goes in the casket with me.

I made that statement. But as I got in the hobby deeper, I'm realizing, man, there's a 52 mantle in every auction. Also, the other one was a 1915 Cracker Jack, Hannes Wagner card, and I'd only had it about three months.

It's awesome too, but I can get another one of those. And then the third card that popped in my mind, because I'm going, I I need to liquidate fast because if I'm gonna do this, I gotta do it now.

It's a buy it now situation. And the other card was I had a 1955 signed Jackie Robinson, but I had two of them. So I had doubles. In those cards, I moved them in thirty six hours and raised a $100,000 to buy this card.

And because they're liquid currency, man. If you buy the right stuff, it is. Now if you're putting a $100,000 worth of money into five cards that are, like, really niche, those are a little harder to move.

But, so, yeah, man, I I made I made a little bit of money off all those two. I didn't try to get rich off those sales.

I just man, I just needed the money. Mhmm. So I let him know I'm doing it, dude. Because here's what went through my mind on a card like this. This card, there has only been four public sales since 02/2019. Four.

There's only 30 in existence. And the price I paid on this card was more than than anything had been in those pub when I look up comps, I'm breaking comps, man. But I also know I'm not an investor per se, but I don't I'm not stupid.

I don't wanna buy a card and, like, be underwater in it right off the bat. This card right here, I I think, is one day gonna be, man, half a million dollars in ten, fifteen years.

There's no doubt in my mind. And doing stuff like this is gonna help raise the price of it, honestly, because people just don't know about it.

So, yeah, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and all those guys that are big in our hobby in the vintage world, they have all these different years of cards.

So their values all spread out. Right? Mantle, I think, has 25 different cards, in different years just in base card.

There's one for Josh Gibson, and it's this one right here. It's not a plan days card because he died in January of nineteen forty seven just a few months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

He had a brain tumor and died at 35 years old. So this card was kind of an ode to him because he was a legend in Puerto Rico.

They called him Superman, only he was like a comic book. They didn't call him Babe Ruth there. They had a comic book superhero name for him. I can't remember what the name is in Spanish, but that was his nickname.

So, yeah, they did that just as a a nod to him and his greatness, after he passed away. So the card itself is freaking awesome, but the fact that if I didn't jump on this, I would regret it for the rest of my life, man.

So Oh, man. He's the opportunity. What a what a story. I have to ask you, I think, as you're talking through and illustrating everything about the card, the deal, why it matters, it all resonates.

I my question is, the this card wasn't even known about, until 02/2003. You just ran off the list of just some iconic cards that you sold in order to raise funds to buy this Josh Gibson card.

I would imagine if you rewound the tape twenty, thirty years, you and you saw yourself doing what you were doing, you'd be like, there's no chance I'm doing this.

I don't even know what this card is. Maybe talk about, like, the driving force behind getting rid of three cards that are all easily recognizable. People see these cards. They've seen them before.

They know the players. But for this card of a player that maybe not a lot of people know about and a card that maybe not a lot of people even know it exists, like, you had to make this decision in a very, very short time.

Like, how did all of these things come together where you feel you felt not only comfortable with it, but you actually did it.

Yeah. Well, again, I want another 52 mantle. I really do, and I'll and I'll get one at some point. But I know those I can go on eBay and buy one right now.

It just depends on how nice of one I wanna buy. Okay? The the Honda Wagner, I'll give another one then because I'm building the 1915 Cracker Jack set right now, so I'm gonna need that one to finish the set.

That's a probably that's probably a five or six year set build because those cards aren't readily available either.

And I'm trying to do it in a smart way and not spend a, you know, a ton of I'm trying to stay in a certain grade price range, especially for the commons, and those aren't those aren't plentiful.

So I'll get another one of those. I'm trying to build a signed Jackie Robinson run. Now that that 55 I gave up, I think that's a pop of 16 signed cards in the world, in that 55 set, but I had one. So and I also have a 54.

So I've got two so far. I'm gonna keep if those come up in auction, I will be bidding on them. It just it's gonna be depending on how high they go. So I'll I'll get some more of those, but there's no reason for me to have doubles.

So so that was my reason. And I reached out to a couple of friends of mine who are hobby enthusiasts like me and and are really big into it and asked them their opinion and said, am I crazy?

And they said, absolutely not. They said, if you don't do this, you're out of your mind. Because, again, I can't buy this card. You cannot go on eBay and get it. There's not gonna be on one on Heritage or on Golden or on or anywhere.

Love of the Game, none of those. REA, you're not gonna find this card. And I guarantee you, when another one comes up, what I just paid for this is gonna look like I was the smartest dude in the room.

Do do you know obviously, you know, Jonah has, a copy or maybe a couple at this point. He's got one. He's got one. Do you know where any of the other ones are right now? Yeah. Yeah. I do. I know where two other ones are.

Okay. I feel like when you've got a card like this, part of the fun is to know where every where all the other ones are. And, like, maybe there's how many did you say there's 30? 30. How did you come how did that number present itself?

So you can look up how many are graded. Okay. I know Jonas is raw. And then there's been some who have they have crossed like, cracked them out of a SGC and sent them to PSA, and you can tell.

Because unlike modern when they're pristine coming out and you slide them into a card saver, these have defining marks or corners. So you can look at that card and say that's the same card in this past sale.

It's just in a different slab now. So we think it's around 30. In Puerto Rico, people have gone down there on hunts for these cars, man, because they're they're it's a treasure hunt.

If you can find one at a garage sale that somebody didn't know what they got you turn it around and sell it for $80,000.

I mean, people have scoured that island. It's not that big, and hurricanes have ravaged it. And these things are paper thin, man.

They're they're really thin stock on the card, so they're they're fragile as they are. So, yeah, and I don't think there's gonna be a whole lot more coming out of the woodwork. So, you know, it's kinda set where it is.

But, again, this guy, being that the Major League has just embraced the Negro Leagues the way they have, he was in this he was Satchel Paige was the first Negro League player in Major League Hall of Fame in 1971.

Josh Gibson was a second. He was in 1972. And kinda what spurred that on was Ted Williams.

When Ted Williams did his speech in Cooperstown when he went into the Hall of Fame in 1966, he stumped for the Negro League guys. He said, there are Negro League players that need to be in this hall of fame.

It's a shame they haven't been put there. It's not their fault. They weren't allowed to play in the major leagues, and they were great players. He said, players like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, he named those two guys.

And sure enough, five and six years later, that's exactly what happened. So Absolutely incredible. Awesome story. Great card. I, yeah, I I have an appreciation, for this card just in hearing all of the stories.

I wanna move over to maybe some of these recent, bin smashes that kind of fall within the category that you collect in and maybe move over to the 49 Bowman Jackie Yeah.

PSA seven. This thing sold for in May, bin smash for nearly, 15 k. Mhmm. This card maybe I wanna hear kinda what you have to say about the 49 Jackie and then also this sale.

And I it's I'd be remiss to not just hear your perspective on Jackie and the importance of him in the hobby and especially kinda the area, in lanes that you collect in. Yeah. So I've already kinda told you what I feel about Jackie.

I mean, he again, him and Larry Dobie, they were heroic, with what they did. You know, Jackie Robinson, he also integrated the minor league system the year before in 1946. He was the first black minor league player.

So he dealt with racism there too. But, but to come in in the face of, hatred and bigotry and to do what he did and win the rookie of the year, man, In 1947 was the first year the rookie of the year award was given out.

And so guess who won it? Jackie. And that's another thing. You go back to the Negro Leagues. If you wanna discount what they did and say, yeah, they're a bunch of plumbers and electricians.

You know, I see young guys say that about old players, whether they're Negro League or white guys. It doesn't matter. Man, in the first twelve years after integration, the majority of the rookie of the year awards went to black guys.

MVPs like, Roy Campanella come right out of the Negro Leagues and won three MVP awards with the Brooklyn Dodgers. I mean, so, you know, you had Frank Robinson. You had Hank Aaron.

You had Roberto Clemente. You had Willie Mays. All of those guys came out of that. So so, yeah, they they they were some great players. But this card right here, the significance of this has changed over the last couple of years.

A friend of mine and if you wanna go back and look at my YouTube, it's I did one with Brian Capel, and he is an expert on the 19 what they called for years, the 1948, 1949 leaf set.

And so the last episode I was on, I didn't bring this up here with me. I've got stuff in the say.

But I showed you the, Jackie Robinson leaf card. It's the one with the yellow background. That has always been called his mainstream rookie card. Brian Capel made a discovery. That card and that set was not issued actually until 1949.

It wasn't issued in '48. So guess what it makes this Bowman card? It's also his mainstream rookie card. So it doesn't get the love, the leaf card, and the leaf card still, the prices of those way outperform this Bowman card.

I think at some point, the Bowman card will see a little bit of a lift as that becomes well known and people accept this as the mainstream rookie card.

But then there's the Von Bread cards that I talked to you about that were actually issued in 1947 that are the equivalent of the star Jordan card.

So he has several things that you can call his rookie card. But so this is a great card. I looked up the comps on this, and it it was a strong sale.

Now if you go back a few years ago, around COVID, there was a COVID boom, and these cards sold for a little higher, and then they saw a little bit bit of a dip and a flattening out.

But, yeah, this is a great card. I actually have one. Mine is not as strong a grade. It's a three.

But, you know, there are people that that collect differently. The way and I explained this last time in a vintage world. I wanna find the lowest grade I can find with the highest eye appeal. That's my goal. That's the challenge.

And most of the guys I collect with, that's their challenge too. But there are guys who go for high grades. That's their lane. Personally, I'd rather pay what I paid for this, which, I looked it up. I paid $3,840 for this.

Yeah. But then I can take those other funds that I didn't spend 14,000 like this one cost, and I can go buy some more cards. Yeah. So, so, anyways, it's an awesome card. If you if you bought this card, there's no shame in that.

That's your collecting lane, and I think it's awesome. So it's a beautiful card. No doubt. Let's move over to the 53 man tops mantle. We're always talking about 52 for the reasons we all already know about.

Maybe not as much conversation on the 53. This is the a PSA six sold on May 20 via Binspash for $21,900. Yeah. I wanna know from you, the 53. I just don't hear enough conversation about the 53. Like, what's your perspective on the 53?

Where does it sit, within kind of the pantheon of mantle cards, and what what do you think about this sale? Oh, man. There's a lot of people out there that say the 53 mantle is the most beautiful.

It's got a it's very artistic. But what, you know, if you're not that familiar with vintage cards, you wouldn't realize the 1951 Bowman, Mickey Mantle, which is his rookie card, is the same image.

They just cropped it in on his face. In the '51 Bowman, it's landscape style. I should have brought mine up here, but I again, it's in the safe. But I didn't, but it it's the same image.

It's just landscape style so you see more of the background. But it's absolutely a beautiful card. These cards right here are really difficult to find in high grades because of that red border down there.

Any kind of wear and tear chips off that paint. And if that corner gets touched, you can see it, and that's gonna bring the grade down. The one thing when I when I really zoomed in on this card that I'm a little it's an old flip.

This is an old PSA grade, so this isn't recent. I don't think it would get that grade anymore, and a lot of people pay attention to that. So it's got a stain up in the top left hand corner.

It looks like a little bit of a water stain. So it wouldn't get a 6. 5 today. But no shame in buying this. The main thing to look at are is it's it's pretty well centered, and that red border down there looks really nice.

I've actually got one of those too. Mine's an authentic, but it's it's beautiful. But you can see the red that red corner down there.

It got a little bit rounded. But I spent $1,500 on this one. Now the reason this one's authentic, I think, I've looked at it under a black light to see if it's been colored or something.

Because back in the day, back in the before grading, people would try to put a little color on the corner. Maybe if the red got dinged up, they'd take a red Sharpie and color it. And, you know, PSA will notice that now.

There's no coloring on it. But the other thing that was really prevalent in the eighties was if you had a really nice card, especially a mantle, you put it in the that plexiglass sandwich, which was called a screw down.

It had screws in the corners. And if you screwed them down too tightly, it would make it too thin.

And so it'll get an authentic grade. So I think that's what happened to that one. I think it got smashed. So Oh, the this is kinda smashing bin. Yes. That's right. That's right. The good old screw downs.

We're covering a lot of ground here. Yeah. Well, let's move over to this 32 US caramel, Ty Cobb, PSA three. This thing sold via Binsmash for $6,700 in May. A lot of cool vintage cards going off the board via Binsmash in May.

Yeah. What what tell us about this card. I like, you got the full name on the front, which is cool. Yeah. Maybe help us understand, the history behind this one. Yeah. So The US caramel, it's a vintage set you don't see a lot of.

It's, got low pop counts. Those were produced by the US caramel company out of Boston, Massachusetts, and it was mainly, distributed in that area. So they didn't there's not a lot of them out there.

I looked up the pop count on this one. It's a 140, graded cards between SGC and PSA combined. I don't know about Beckett or any of those, but but just between those two, and that's gonna be the majority of them.

This is not a playing days card of Ty Cobb. So he had already retired, and there are vintage snobs out there that look at cards that aren't playing days, and they turn their nose up at it.

But there's he's got some great cards that aren't playing days. He's got that one. There was a set in 1933 done by Gaudi called Sports Kings.

I've got one of those. Got a yellow background that that they put him in. But this set alone, there's 32 cards. 27 of them are baseball players, and, there's some golfers and a boxer, that make up the other five.

But it's a great set. The red background is very similar to the one you show with Jackie Robinson. People compare it to this set, and this is my Ty Cobb Cracker Jack.

Now this is playing days. This is a 1914. As far as the, pop counts go, there's only a 162 of these Cracker Jacks in existence. So it's actually a little bit more prevalent than the the caramel.

So it's a great card. They they smash bin and spend a little bit more than what comps showed they should have. But if you look at public sales on BCP, there's not been a lot of public sales on this card.

So, I don't think it sells that often. There's not a lot of them out there. If you're a Ty Cobb collector, though, you'd want this card in your collection.

It's centered. It's got great corners, and it's a pretty recent grade, graded card. So, yeah, great card. I I love it. Incredible. Such good context on the Jackie. '49 Bowman Jackie, '53 Topps mantle, and the '32 US caramel Ty Cobb.

Tony, I like to end the conversation by bringing up a listing that I found on eBay, and I think it might be appropriate just based on our conversation is to pull up a '52 mantle.

And this is the not not having you smash Ben and Oh my god.

I looked at the comp, and the comp is a little high, or the list price is a little high based on last comps. But what I wanna do here, I know you've been in this position before where you've bought a a mantle off of, eBay, I believe.

I I want you to maybe help educate us based on this copy. This is a PSA five. It's, currently listed for 225 k. Yep.

Like, when you're looking at this card, one of the most, if not the most iconic card in all of the hobby, like, the appearance, every there's all these technical factors that go into consideration for people to buy one of these at a certain price.

Like, help help help us understand when you look at a copy like this, what you're looking at, and if this one passes the sniff test for you. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Definitely passes the sniff test. So this one right here is a five and, but it's a recent grade. I don't know whether somebody flipped it from SGC or it just came out of a somebody's you know, a lot of the baby boomers I'm I'm a Gen X.

My parents were baby boomers. And, you know, as as they age out or they pass away and their collections are left, some of the raw cards that have been in their collections and maybe binders are gonna start hitting the market.

That's already happened some, but I think it's happened it's happened for the last twenty years.

This card right here is immaculate, man, as far as, you know, for a five. The, you know, the 52 mantles, if you're not familiar with the 52 sets, they're notoriously out of center. To find one that's centered is another kind of rarity.

So let's just say this were a five and it was perfectly centered, it'd probably sell at a seven comp. Maybe even at a eight. Because there's probably only out of all the manuals, because this one is not a rare card.

I think there's, like, 3,000 of them graded or something like that. But out of maybe a PSA five, there's maybe two or three centered, out of all of them.

So this one isn't too bad, though. And, also, this was a double print. So the '52 mantle was actually they printed them on sheets, and, and they released them kinda like they did today.

They had series one, two, three, and I believe this was series four and the last series. So, Mantle, Bobby Richardson, and Jackie Robinson were all in the top left corner in cards three eleven, three twelve, and three thirteen.

They were also, we think, in the bottom right hand corner because they ran that was the last series. So there was gonna be three blank spots at the end.

They threw those three. So even though this is double printed, it's rare. It's it the well, I shouldn't say rare. The pop count on this is about the same as the Willie Mays who was in a earlier series.

And there's all these legends about tops printed these cards, and and they this was the first year that that tops did the big cards, and it was the first modern set with the color, and it's they're beautiful.

But in night in later in the year, and when they went to do the 53 set, they still had all these unopened cartons.

They couldn't unload them to the local, drugstore five and dimes that sold baseball cards because it was football season. And so the the drugstore operator is like, I don't need anymore.

You know? We hadn't sold these yet, so they wouldn't buy them. And the owner of Tops told them to load all those on a barge, take them out in the river, out in the Hudson River, and throw them in the ocean.

And that's what they did. That's legend. And so that's why there's not that many of the last series that you can find.

But because this one was double printed, and people love Mickey Mantle. He was the heartthrob of the fifties with girls and boys. He was who you wanted to date or you wanted to be if you're a dude.

And, so the man the the Yankees owned baseball in the nineteen fifties. And this guy, he had the highest war of any player in the fifties. Was a beast. So, anyways, great card. There's actually a type one and a type two of this one.

This is a type one. I can tell by looking at it. There's certain details about the card. So they the type one's not worth any more than the type two, but it is interesting to find out.

If you wanna figure that out, Google it. It's very interesting the way the stars do around the nameplate, the way the black border is all the way around the Yankees logo.

And then the type two, which mine was, this was a type one, had a little white speck up by on the left side of the card in the blue that on the printing plate, that it just had a white spot on it, and they all have that.

There's that some other and on the back of the card, there's a baseball with the with the card number in it. And the way the seams go is one way on type one, and it's the opposite way on type two.

So there's some there's some subtle differences that don't really have anything to do with the value of the card. But when you're a card nerd like me, you know those, and it's just another cool thing to know.

So If if you want more, nerdy details on cards and or the history of baseball cards, make sure you check out Tony's channel Southern Collector 14. Tony, this was incredible.

Appreciate you coming on, sharing the story of your Josh Gibson, and then dropping some knowledge on some of these other cards. As always, this was a ton of fun, and looking forward to doing it again down the road.

Man, it's been a blast. I'm here anytime you want me, dude. I love doing this. So, I enjoy it. So I appreciate you, and I feel honored to be on your platform.