Wow, amazing stuff. I lost count of the Pirates cards in this thread...I am humbled by the caliber of collection I see here. Since I collect a variety of stuff I thought I would pull my favorite of each type. My modest contributions:
Baseball card, prewar: A newly-cataloged Adam Hats card that I've posted here so many times that people are certainly sick of it, but I am very glad to have it:
Baseball card, postwar: 1954 Johnston Cookies Hank Aaron RC:
Baseball memorabilia: A Lefty Gomez matchbook from the 1930s Adam Hats celebrity contest:
Baseball autograph: picked this up at the National:
Surfing/swimming: I have wanted this PC of the Duke for a long time, finally got one:
Soccer: This Pele card is my best soccer pick-up ever [1968 Crack from Argentina]:
Favorite hockey piece: 1964 postmarked Bobby Hull JD MCCarthy PC:
Favorite basketball piece: 1960 Wilt Chamberlain team issue
Favorite football piece: got this in a collection of 1950s-1960s cards I picked up. My favorite set of the 1950s-1960s FB, and Bart Starr was the #1 card in 1968, and the card had the special horizontal design only used for the Packers and Raiders Super Bowl teams:
Favorite nonsport: Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman! 1957 George Reeves fan issue with neat DC comic advertising:
Favorite autograph: Nigel "The Dark Destroyer" Benn: He doesn't sign cards except on special occasions. A friend got this for me at a HOF event:
Favorite boxing card: Tough choosing here but I'd have to go with this 1920s Benny Leonard restaurant PC. I'd been looking for one for years:
Favorite boxing memorabilia: Again, a brutal choice, but I gotta go with this ticket from Jim Jeffries' boxing venue just up the block from my office here in Burbank. Again, an item I'd been hoping to find for a very long time:
And last of all, oddest oddball item is this rodeo PC of future movie star Hoot Gibson learning the hard way that if a horse doesn't want to be ridden, odds are the horse will win. I just love the image:
