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Originally Posted by wvu_class_of_2001
Congratulations! I love all of the backstory as well. I don't know a ton about the STP cards, nor do I have any. One thing I love and hate at the same time about the old racing cards is that we don't know a ton about them. I know that I've read discussion about distribution of the STP cards and there's no difinitive answer, if I am correct.
Recently I bought a set of the 1960 Parkhurst Indianapolis Speedway Winners/Hawes Wax Indy/V338-2 (it goes by many names) set. I just can't seem to find out much about the history of the set, the distribution (though I know it was in pack form), or much of anything.
Every kind of collecting has it's own unique challenges. I envy the vintage baseball guys in that, while prices can be high, there is generally more knowledge about the cards and also more of them available than we have in racing.
Again, congratulations on the acquisition! Thank you so much for sharing!
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Thanks for the kind words, Kin. There is a definitive answer about distribution of the STP set. It was a free set available at the 1972 Daytona 500 and possibly at Talladega that year as well. One theory that has been speculated about the Lorenzen cards being so rare (none of the cards are common) is because he did not race in the Daytona 500 that year and went back into retirement after running just a handful of races that season. STP then moved their sponsorship to Richard Petty.
Here is an obituary of the original owner of the cards, racing photographer Leroy Leibelsperger. As I said earlier, Leibelsperger passed away in May of this year and the obituary talks about him following the eastern races of the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit as a photographer throughout the 1970s.
The really crazy thing is that Leibelsperger lived 15 minutes away from me and the cards sold at a live auction 10 minutes from my house. It makes me sick that the cards sold for $40 in the live auction while being mixed in with a bunch of other car stuff.
http://aarn.com/2016/05/26/obits-lon...leibelsperger/
Congratulations on the Hawes Wax set pick-up. This thread has not had any posts in a while, so i am glad to read you have also had a cool pick-up recently.
The thing I like about being a racing collector is that even an extreme rarity like the Lorenzen cards are at least somewhat attainable money-wise (I thought long and hard about how big a snipe I was willing to make). I was sort of expecting someone to go crazy with a $2,000-3,000 snipe because of how rare the card is. I would have been blown out of the water if that had happened. I told the seller that if this had been a extreme rarity of a baseball card from a popular set, that would mostly likely be a five or even six-figure card. Other extreme rarities like the Rocky Graziano card from the 1948 Leaf boxing set and the William McKinley card from the 1932 U.S. Caramel Presidents set are well over $10,000 cards.