New Member Seeking Advice...Vintage Baseball Cards

[GODAWGS31]

First official post on this forum. I'm not new to card collecting but had stepped away for many years. I'm posting trying to get some advice from forum members about how to handle a recent set collection I re-discovered I had.

I came in to a large family collection of vintage (pre-1961) cards (baseball mostly and some football) around 2007 and spent years getting them graded and sold (kicking myself now seeing the values they are going for but that's another story for another day). Part of the collection that I overlooked (because I didn't know what they were at the time and they didn't seem too interesting at the time, very small cards) was a group of around 40-45 1955 Topps and 1956 Topps Hocus Focus cards. They are very small and get set aside in a small box and life moved on and I forgot about them.

I recently brought these back out and was doing some research and was shocked to find out how scarce they really are. Have read on a number of different online posts that many consider them to be the most difficult of all Topps sets ever to collect. There are 23 baseball cards in the '55 set and to date only 22 examples total have ever been graded on the PSA Pop report. They don't have a huge following with collectors (probably because of their scarcity and the difficulty in even finding examples of them) but they do have a following none the less and I've found a few auction results going back within the last 10-15 years.

I have 10 total baseball cards, 8 different players (2 duplicates), and 3 of those cards have 0 on the Pop report having no known graded examples. For anyone that knows anything about the sets there were also non-sports cards as well that consisted of world leaders, world wonders, movie stars, sports thrills, westerners, etc.

Of the "non-sports" cards I also have 15-17 examples that also have 0 on the Pop report (no examples ever graded). So I've got 15-20 1950's era Topps cards that have never graced the doors of PSA or any other grading company that I'm aware of.

I wanted to get some advice on the best way to handle this batch of cards? I ultimately would like to look at selling them (most likely through a catalog-type auction house) and wanted to get some advice on which one might be the best to reach out to and why? I recently submitted half the cards (22 examples) for PSA grading including all the baseball examples, a number of the previously ungraded "non-sport" cards and a few others that were best in shape.

If anyone can provide any additional information or insight on this set, etc. or advice on best ways to proceed, etc. I'm all ears and would appreciate any help.

Can post photos of some of the cards as well if anyone is interested (they're not the prettiest Topps cards by any means but I guess that's what you get when they are cards developed nearly 70 years ago by getting them wet or spitting on them and exposing them to sunlight to develop the card picture).

Thanks,

Matt

[doug.goodman]

Welcome to fantasy island, Matt.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who looks forward to seeing some pictures.

Doug

[Rhotchkiss]

Hi Matt, welcome to the forum.

Cool cards. I went on eBay and looked these up- there are actually quite a few of them available on eBay (including a few from a guy named the magic loogie), and the asking prices don’t strike me as super-high given the apparent scarcity. My gut is that these will sell better as a (substantially) complete set, rather than individually.

Anyway, I would reach out to some auction houses - they can have them graded for you and they will know how best to list them. Feel free to PM me for a few suggestions, although I am sure a few have or will be reaching out

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Hi Matt, welcome to the forum.

Cool cards. I went on eBay and looked these up- there are actually quite a few of them available on eBay (including a few from a guy named the magic loogie), and the asking prices don’t strike me as super-high given the apparent scarcity. My gut is that these will sell better as a (substantially) complete set, rather than individually.

Anyway, I would reach out to some auction houses - they can have them graded for you and they will know how best to list them. Feel free to PM me for a few suggestions, although I am sure a few have or will be reaching out

+1 agree

And welcome to the forum

And would love to see some photos of your collection

[BobbyStrawberry]

Welcome, Matt!

I too am curious to see the cards...

[Section103]

Excellent fortune for you! Those Hocus Focus cards are really intriguing. I have my eye on one in particular and there just arent many examples out there. Good luck going forward and keep us updated on which (if any) auction house you go with.