Anyone Collect 1959 Bazooka Football?

[quinnsryche]

Anyone out there collect '59 Bazooka football? Would love to see some examples and possibly interesting stories about how you obtained them or to just share general knowledge about them. Have always thought they looked great but don't know much back story behind them. Go ahead and post some pics of them beauties!

[clamendo]

Picked this up on Ebay a long time ago. I got an email from the under bidder saying he had looked for this card for 10 years and offered my 3X what I paid. I hung on to it. Tracy, Groza, and Connerly are the keys.t.jpg

[jefferyepayne]

Jim Brown is a toughie as well! I love this set.

I have a lot of info on this set and completed it a few years ago. Have a bunch of doubles as well. What do you want to know about the set?

Here are the two Conerly Cards. The originally had Conerly playing for the Colts instead of the Giants but it was corrected during printing.





jeff

[quinnsryche]

I guess questions like: why are the tough ones tough? Was it limited distribution of particular players or difficulty due to geographic distribution? What are approximate quantities of various players still available (10's/100's/1000's)? Any interesting stories about production or finds (singles or groups). Much has been written about the baseball issue, not much about these.

[jefferyepayne]

In early 1959 Topps released a nine card Bazooka baseball card set on the bottom of 25 piece Bazooka gum boxes. The promotion was so popular that they added 14 additional baseball players to the set later in the season. These 14 are short prints. Late in the year Topps replaced the baseball players on Bazooka boxes with football players. It is likely that the SP's are ones added later just like the SP's in the baseball set.

I don't know the population counts for these but bet there are many more raw ones than graded ones. I was collecting them one by one and had about 1/2 the set when an opportunity presented itself to purchase a near complete set a few years ago. That's how I completed the set and why I have doubles.

jeff

[CowboysGuide]

I've seen lots of complete Bazooka boxes from the 1971 football set, but never seen any from the 1959 set. Does anyone have a complete box they could post a photo of?

[clamendo]

http://sgccard.com/registry/cards/us5965.jpg
They look nice in the sgc holders


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[clamendo]

This is a tough card
http://sgccard.com/imageconverter.as...rds/us5966.jpg


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[supplex55]

I recently posted my 1959 Bazooka set on imageevent.com. It took me almost 20 years to complete, with the Groza being the last card to finish the set. I had to borrow 600.00 from my Dad in the 1996 to purchase it as I had just returned from the National Sports Collector's Convention in fruitless pursuit of finishing the set (but spending my last dollar anyway), and a letter arrived from Don Niemi telling me he had one! According to Don, he felt the Groza was the toughest in the set and that there were less than 15 or so in existence (don't know how he came by those numbers). He also said he felt it was one of the 5 rarest football cards in the hobby.
http://imageevent.com/supplex55/1959bazookafootballset

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by supplex55

I recently posted my 1959 Bazooka set on imageevent.com. It took me almost 20 years to complete, with the Groza being the last card to finish the set. I had to borrow 600.00 from my Dad in the 1996 to purchase it as I had just returned from the National Sports Collector's Convention in fruitless pursuit of finishing the set (but spending my last dollar anyway), and a letter arrived from Don Niemi telling me he had one! According to Don, he felt the Groza was the toughest in the set and that there were less than 15 or so in existence (don't know how he came by those numbers). He also said he felt it was one of the 5 rarest football cards in the hobby.
http://imageevent.com/supplex55/1959bazookafootballset

Damn that is impressive.

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by supplex55

I recently posted my 1959 Bazooka set on imageevent.com. It took me almost 20 years to complete, with the Groza being the last card to finish the set. I had to borrow 600.00 from my Dad in the 1996 to purchase it as I had just returned from the National Sports Collector's Convention in fruitless pursuit of finishing the set (but spending my last dollar anyway), and a letter arrived from Don Niemi telling me he had one! According to Don, he felt the Groza was the toughest in the set and that there were less than 15 or so in existence (don't know how he came by those numbers). He also said he felt it was one of the 5 rarest football cards in the hobby.
http://imageevent.com/supplex55/1959bazookafootballset

Great set and images!

The 1959 Bazooka set is one of my favorites. They are just beautiful cards. I would say at this point, though, that the Groza is not one of the 5 rarest football cards in the hobby as so many oddball and obscure sets have been identified since Don told you that decades ago. It is still a very difficult card to find, though. I've been trying to upgrade mine for years without any luck. Same for Tom Tracy.

jeff

[Justus]

http://imageevent.com/supplex55/1959bazookafootballset[/QUOTE]

Wow, that is incredible!

[samosa4u]

A few things I want to say about this set:

I didn't know that Bazooka made a smaller box for these cards. I always thought that all the Bazooka boxes from this period were of the same size and that kids would just buy these gums individually and a lucky one in the end would be given the empty box by the store owner. So the only way to get your hands on these cards was to purchase a sealed box, correct? How much did the box cost? Anyone have a clue?

Now I agree that these cards look awesome, but I hate how almost all of them are portrait shots. The Jim Brown card is awesome because it is an action shot and Bazooka should have included more action shots in this football set.

And speaking of the Jim Brown card, I would love to own one, but the people listing them on eBay are asking for INSANE amounts of money for theirs. Now I don't mind overpaying a little for it, but I am not going to spend thousands of dollars for it. I have seen beautiful ungraded examples selling for less than $1,000 USD at auction.

[spec]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

A few things I want to say about this set:

I didn't know that Bazooka made a smaller box for these cards. I always thought that all the Bazooka boxes from this period were of the same size and that kids would just buy these gums individually and a lucky one in the end would be given the empty box by the store owner. So the only way to get your hands on these cards was to purchase a sealed box, correct? How much did the box cost? Anyone have a clue?

Now I agree that these cards look awesome, but I hate how almost all of them are portrait shots. The Jim Brown card is awesome because it is an action shot and Bazooka should have included more action shots in this football set.

And speaking of the Jim Brown card, I would love to own one, but the people listing them on eBay are asking for INSANE amounts of money for theirs. Now I don't mind overpaying a little for it, but I am not going to spend thousands of dollars for it. I have seen beautiful ungraded examples selling for less than $1,000 USD at auction.

As I recall, the Bazooka boxes cost about a quarter, far more than 12-year-old me could spend on a single card. I should have bought the boxes and sold the gum at school as I did in later years when I realized it made more sense to buy a box of each Topps series rather than try to piece them together pack by pack.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

A few things I want to say about this set:

I didn't know that Bazooka made a smaller box for these cards. I always thought that all the Bazooka boxes from this period were of the same size and that kids would just buy these gums individually and a lucky one in the end would be given the empty box by the store owner. So the only way to get your hands on these cards was to purchase a sealed box, correct? How much did the box cost? Anyone have a clue?

Now I agree that these cards look awesome, but I hate how almost all of them are portrait shots. The Jim Brown card is awesome because it is an action shot and Bazooka should have included more action shots in this football set.

And speaking of the Jim Brown card, I would love to own one, but the people listing them on eBay are asking for INSANE amounts of money for theirs. Now I don't mind overpaying a little for it, but I am not going to spend thousands of dollars for it. I have seen beautiful ungraded examples selling for less than $1,000 USD at auction.

Yeah same reaction to the ebay prices.

[toppcat]

I wonder if Ozzie Sweet took some of the pix in this set?