November pickups

[BradH]

I acquired a fairly small collection on Friday night and have started to sort through it. This collection was stored in the back room of an antique shop for 30+ years, but is generally pretty clean.

The main reason I wanted it was for the 13 1968 Topps posters that are preserved with cardboard backing and wrapped in cellophane. The Mantle and Clemente are gorgeous.

I didn't know it at the time, but I have discovered a 1982 Fleer vending box in the group, along with some unopened boxes of oddball Topps issues from the 1980s.

The vending box is flimsy and not in great shape, but the cards inside are virtually perfect except for some slight warping. I decided to go ahead and go through it and it yielded one Cal Ripken RC, a Lee Smith RC and multiples of a few other Hall of Famers. I've never built this set, but now I might since I have the key cards.

There was also an uncut sheet of 1982 Topps baseball. The edges of the sheet are a little rough in some spots, but I think it'll look fine in a poster frame. There are no creases within the middle of the sheet. The Ripken is perfect.

I was intrigued by the right edge, where there is some blue ink smeared on the Lee Smith card. I would love to have this Smith card by itself, with the ink smeared. I'm a sucker for oddball printing mistakes.

There were two large binders -- one with 60s/70s baseball cards and one with 50s/60s/70s football cards. The Football binder was in much better shape than the baseball. It included a great Joe Montana RC, along with several RCs and 2nd/3rd year cards for 1960s-70s era Hall of Famers. The Terry Bradshaw RC is a little rough.

The baseball binder was filled with tons of Braves players (several Aarons) and a lot of HOFers from the 60s/70s, but it's disappointing that some of them are a bit beat up.