Any chance that a Brock-a-brella makes an appearance in this thread?

Here ya go..... My very first selfie......I really am not a convicted criminal, although this picture seems to say otherwise...... I always wondered if John Boccabella ever was the inspiration for the term Brock-a-brella.

You see Brock-a-brella's on Ebay pretty frequently, in all different colors, and somewhere I have a couple others. One was sold at an amusement park in New England. When I find it I will scan it.

Never thought about that, Boccabella and Brock-A-Bella. They were teammates on the Cubs in 1963. I wonder if Boccabella got a cut of the profits? :)

Boc or Brock
 

Note both Lou and John are smiling, well John sort of. But, Kevin, geez, you sure look unhappy in the topper. Sort of reminds me of Lou's look in that 62 card in a Cub uniform :)

You might be right about players that are miserable about being Cubs. :(

Backing up a bit to 1975, here is the HoHo box which I found over the weekend.

Ho Ho
 

Neat pick up David

Nice David. The Hostess cards sure do bring back great childhood memories of collecting for me.

Jumping into 1977, Mike Schecter and Associates made round cards (discs) in 1977 and 78 mainly, most with advertising on the back for many types of businesses. Most are fairly easy to find thanks to Ebay, some are tougher. I'll go through all the discs alphabetically, with anecdotal evidence on which ones I thought were the hardest to find.

Here is the Big T - Tastee Freeze disc from 1978.

Enjoy a little song about a Tastee Freeze while looking at this thread

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uq-Pf13HQo

After clearing 11 inches of snow off the loading dock, here is another disc. The blank back discs are one of the easiest to find, perhaps they are unstamped Carousel discs.

And a "10".

Buckmans Ice Cream Village disc. Another one that is not to difficult to find.

Burger Chef - Pretty easy to find, including in whole sheets which will be tomorrow. I think Burger Chef was bought out by Hardee's in the Mid West anyway in the late 70's early 80's.

Burger Chef complete sheet.

Mike Tyson
 

I see him on one of the panels. The only baseball I ever "caught "at a game was a foul ball by Mike Tyson in the 2nd, round, Bush Stadium. People around me all stood up with their hands up, while I ducked down in my chair. The guy behind me stood on his chair, it hit his hands, dropped through the hands of others reaching for it, and fell in my lap. I still have it :)

Burger Chef, there's a name I haven't heard in a while. You're right, Hardee's did buy them out. Nice panels.

I can finally say that I have more of something than Al. I've caught two live game foul balls, and several batting practice home runs. Actually, I dropped a few of the batting practice homers and picked them up :o.

The box could be assembled to make this ball park while you sat there eating your burger and fries.....

Carousel Snack Bars came out with these in 1976. I have 11 different, there are probably more, but they are pretty tough to find. I suspect a lot of the blank backed ones may be unstamped Carousels.

Is it possible to post all of the backs of your stamped Carousel discs? I'd like to see all of the locations that you have since you said you had 11 different ones. I try to get the Brooks ones when I can and it's nice to know all of the locations.

Here are the other backs I have. Please let me know of others you have that I do not have. Carousel is a mystery to me. There were apparently hundreds of stores, but very few were ever back stamped. How many do you have?

Here are all of the different 1976 MSA Carousel stamped backs that I have. I have serious doubts about the authenticity of the Louisville, KY #427. I think someone created a bunch of the #427's recently, there is a seller on eBay that has an endless supply of them. I have read that there are up to thirty different known 1976 Carousel stamps, even one from Alaska.

Thanks Cliff - There are a few backs there I need.

Here is the Chilly Willee disc, another fairly easy one to find.

Carousel Discs (Stamped back)
 

Not necessarily Brooks, but I think the following have not been listed:

Akron, OH
Anchorage, AK (never seen, but heard that this exists...somewhere)
Davenport, IA
Federal Way, WA
Omaha, NB
Redding, CA
Youngstown, OH

Cliff - Thanks for posting a picture of those discs. There were a few within your picture that I had never seen before...

Great info!

Crane potato chips - Fairly easy to find. One of a couple of the discs to replace the stars across the top with the advertisers name.

Soft drink cup lid. I suppose there are many "variations" depending on where the straw hole is. This is one of the hardest to find. I've often wondered if this could also be faked easily, as they appear to just be a wax paper copy glued onto the lids.

MSA Customized - an ad for MSA appears on the back - One of the 2 or 3 hardest to find in my opinion. Has anyone ever seen any of the tennis players or the other "people, places, and things"?

Cup Lids
 

David---As a variant collector myself, I think you should catalog all the possible straw hole variants :)

Here we have the "straw hole at 3 o'clock" and "straw hole at 6 o'clock" variations. Is that a good start?

76 and 77 Dairy Isle from upstate NY. Per the Standard Catalog 76 had red and purple backs and 77 had red and blue. I am really not sure if all the players are available with both backs, or if half were printed in 1 color, or for that matter if there is a way to distinguish the 76 and 77 red backs from each other. At any rate this is one of the easier ones to find, despite apparently a somewhat limited distribution area.

Detroit Caesars softball disc. Owned by Mike Ilitch - Little Caesars owner, they drew thousands to watch them play. Do you know who there 2 most famous players were? (they were not the best players however...)

Here is a link to the history of the team.

http://www.detroitcaesars.com/

Norm cash and Mickey stanley


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100% with you all on Brock being one of my favorites.

I started a Brock collection where I tried to get every TOPPS regular issue of him.
Well I made it. Set is completed. This was the final card I needed and I got a good one IMO...

<a href="http://s209.photobucket.com/user/TopekaPalms/media/004_zpsace8b20c.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb212/TopekaPalms/004_zpsace8b20c.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 004_zpsace8b20c.jpg"/></a>

1968
 

Nice one K

Cash is right but according to the web site Stanley is not the other

Yes, nice 68.

Now you have to get the other 250 cards.....

Holiday Inn - another one that is pretty easy to find.

Holiday Inn
 

Lou looks smarter in that photo.Even back then Holiday Inn must have had the mojo

They were the first to offer some form of free breakfast with your stay, as they always advertised "Kids eat free".

Isaly's and Sweet William disc. Probably the most plentiful of all of them.

Orbaker's disc, fairly easy to find.

Some may like these types of cards and some may not; but I just picked up on COMC a 2014 Topps Buyback Card of a 1977 Topps Brock (as part of my most recentl shipment) with the buyback stamp.

I know I'm in the minority but I love those cards as well as the Topps Heritage Buybacks which began six years ago.

Rich

So is this an actual 77 Topps card stamped on the back? Or a 2014 card in the style of 77 Topps?

Red Barn discs. These are definitely one of the harder ones to find, especially the no address variation. Supposedly the backs are in red and purple, I have never seen a purple one.

True story, after several years of Ebaying for a Red Barn disc, I finally found one, only to set it on the couch and sit on it, creasing it almost in half. I have since found a couple to replace that one.

It's a 1977 Card with 2014 stamp. I like those cards, I know many don't

Rich

Buy Backs
 

Are these older cards Topps purchased in the market, stamped with a current date and then inserted in current packs ?

Yes, this is an actual 1977 card topps purchased in the secondary market and put a 2014 stamp on the card. They have been doing this with Heritage for many years.

The first time they put in cards into packs was in 1991 and there was no stamp on those cards. That may have been preferable if the card was a 1968 Mantle but I saw (and these were almost case hits) 1989 commons come out of the packs. Now, what is the point of getting a five cent card as your hit without increasing that card's value. Once that card is out of the pack, it's an 1989 common again. I said at the time, cards like that needed to be stamped and I still say that to this day.

Here's my start at a Carousel checklist. Where info is incomplete, I haven't seen a card or scan, but have anecdotal evidence (usually an eBay listing without all the details or back scan). If you can fill in any gaps please let me know.

27
43
165 Volusia Mall Daytona Beach FL
205 Madison WI
276
359 Raleigh Springs Mall Memphis TN
403 Washington Square Mall Indianapolis IN
405 Indianapolis IN
417 Cinderella City Gold Mall Englewood CO
426 Louisville KY
427 Bashford Manor Mall Louisville KY
428 Fayette Mall Lexington KY
452
453 Fashion Square Mall Saginaw MI
454 Adrian Mall Adrian MI
456 Eastland Mall Flint MI
476
485 Mellet Mall Canton OH
526 Apache Mall Rochester MN
579 Western Mall Sioux Falls SD
585 171 East Towne Mall Madison WI
588 Towne Mall Madison WI
688 Westroads Center Omaha NE
817 Cinderella City Gold Mall Englewood CO
818 Cinderella City Blue Mall Englewood CO
912 Westminster Mall Westminster CO
913 Anaheim Plaza Anaheim CA
914 Serramonte Center Daly City CA
916 Lakewood Mall Lakewood CA
925 Orange Mall Orange CA
2760 Deptford Mall Deptford NJ
6065 Market Place Shopping Center Champaign IL
9110 Mt. Shasta Mall Redding CA
9310 Fashion Plaza West Covina CA
NNO 9549 Penn Avenue South Minneapolis MN
NNO Tastee Freez of North Aurora
Akron OH
Anchorage AK
Davenport IA
Federal Way WA
Youngstown OH

Msa
 

Thanks for the listing; I added a couple to my listing. The only one that's on my list, that wasn't on yours, was Sacramento, CA. I don't have any other information on this location.

Safelon lunch bag disc. I have seen unopened Safelon packages, but never one with Lou Brock in it. That would be kind of a "Holy Grail" kind of collectible. Safelon discs are pretty common.

On the left is the 77 and Saga and on the right is the 78 Saga discs. Saga was a school lunch company. These are some of the tougher ones to find.

The scans are not right. The blue front scan on the top left goes with the back scan on the right. The white front scan top right goes with the bottom left back scan.

Saga
 

Yeah...those Saga's are toughies!

Tastee Freeze discs. Pretty easy to find.

Towne Club - another of the easier discs to find. I also just realized I put Tastee Freeze up twice, it was also under the Big T/Tastee Freeze name. Not sure how I did that.

Wiffle Ball box - flattened and complete. On the inside of the box are Dave Parker and Fred Lynn.

More fun with Wiffle Balls.....

Wiffle retail box. It also has a Yaz, Garvey, and Fidrych on the box.

And the last of the Wiffle Ball discs

Almost done with the discs. Here is the Wendy's disc.

Zip Z disc. I think this is the last of the MSA discs that Brock was on. I think I have all of them, except for an unknown amount of Carousel discs. You disc collectors, are there others, or perhaps different colors of backs or fronts?

Continuing on in the "Things that are round" genre from the mid to late 70's are these pins and buttons.

Brock
 

Only 5 months to go David :)

Well, I am down to less than 100 items left, and the way I put multiples of many things up such as the 4 buttons above as 1 post, I may not make it, but it will be close.

I should make it into June at least I think.

Brock
 

Only kidding David. It has been a great thread. Thanks for making the effort

I think other people will pitch in to help out if you run out. I don't have much but I will do my part.

Vess Soda produced Brocca Pop, probably from 1977 or 78, based on the fact it mentions stolen base 893 from August 29, 1977.

I remember drinking Brocca Pop. Completely forgot about it until now David. I was 11 at that time it was out. Good stuff! Always liked Vess products.

1977 RC Cola cans. Brock was not on the 78 cans, but was on the T Shirt iron on patch.

I remember riding my bike to baseball practice in Crystal City MO and stopping at the IGA on my way home to check and see which cans they had. Never did find a Brock.

I used to pick the cans out of the trash, and off the road sides.

Here are 2 flats that never for some reason made it into cans. One has square corners, the other rounded. The rounded one is a proof of some sort with colors noted at the top

Note the red Brock button has a reversed negative. I have never seen a corrected one. Great thread that I always follow.

Well... I never noticed that. Now unfortunately, I have to begin checking everyone of those buttons on Ebay..... and there are lots of them.

1977 RC "Flat" proof with no blue color. Also, a while ago on Ebay I bought a bunch of RC cans that had the ends cut off neatly, and then they were flattened to make these "Limited Edition RC metal cards".

1977 Gateway cachet featuring stolen base 892

77 Gateway cachet signed - Stolen base 893

If you were a Little Leaguer or High School player 40 years ago, there were no instructional DVD's, or webinars, or downloads, YouTube, or I Tune stores. There was the crusty coach with his chaw of tobacco, and his battery operated cassette tape player.

Here is Lou Brock on Base Stealing. I also have Maury Wills on Base Running, Brooks Robinson on Infielding, and Don Sutton on Pitching. There may be others in the series, they show up on occasion on E Bay.

Also, just thought I would add, if you are a Larry Bowa collector, you need this, as I think that is him late with the tag

1977 Hostess - I just love the way PSA put this card in at such an "attention getting angle", it really accentuates the card.

Tilted
 

Like he is getting ready to slide

Hostess 3 card panel.