1970s baseball pinbacks

[thansen30]

This is the checklist of Brewers pins, provided by Mears:
Dave Bristol - Manager
Tommy Harper - 3B
Mike Hegan - 1B
Andy Kosco - LF
Skip Lockwood - P
Davey May - CF
Marty Pattin - P
Ken Sanders - P
Bill Voss - OF
Danny Walton - OF

http://collectiblescentral.com/ReadA...x?articleid=11

[thansen30]

There are superstars and journeymen in this pin "set." All of them are hard to find. There are also variations in size (the dave bristol is smaller than most) and finish (the Santo example above has a glossy plastic on the front, and an easel back not present on any of the others i've seen).http://www.net54baseball.com/attachm...1&d=1309278619

[Scott Garner]

This may be O/T, but if anyone has a Vida Blue from this set, I would be interested in purchasing it for my no-hit pitcher pinback collection.
PLMK

Thanks!

[JMEnglish27]

Kicking myself right now...

A few years back I saw a bunch of these in a bin, a buck each or so, at a twice-annual Peddler's Faire in Coarsegold, CA.

Memorial Day is coming up again...so I'll have to head up to it this year and see if they're out there again.

Couldn't tell you who or what was there for sure, but they were definitely these, as I remember that McLain one (or some Sen) and maybe the Vida Blue.

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by bigj7489

Kicking myself right now...

A few years back I saw a bunch of these in a bin, a buck each or so, at a twice-annual Peddler's Faire in Coarsegold, CA.

Memorial Day is coming up again...so I'll have to head up to it this year and see if they're out there again.

Couldn't tell you who or what was there for sure, but they were definitely these, as I remember that McLain one (or some Sen) and maybe the Vida Blue.

Thanks, that would be awesome!

[thansen30]

Originally Posted by bigj7489

Kicking myself right now...

A few years back I saw a bunch of these in a bin, a buck each or so, at a twice-annual Peddler's Faire in Coarsegold, CA.

Memorial Day is coming up again...so I'll have to head up to it this year and see if they're out there again.

Couldn't tell you who or what was there for sure, but they were definitely these, as I remember that McLain one (or some Sen) and maybe the Vida Blue.

good luck with the bin! That would be incredible. Please post anything you come across--there is little known about these pins, so the more examples we can share the better

[springpin]

Tom,

Someone wrote to me a while back about the origin of these pins. I did not and still don't know their origin. A good clue is the story of how they were sold by a street vendor outside the ball park. They are definitely unlicensed. Pinbacks will bedevil you with their arcane creations. I don't recall ever seeing a Yankee player in this pin design. That is not all that surprising given the Yankees were a very mediocre team in those years.

I would disagree with you about them having been shot in a studio. It seems extremely unlikely to me that whoever commissioned these pins could convince MLB players to visit a studio (and bring their uniform) to create illegal merchandise. By the 1970s considerable progress had been made in creating "layered" images, i.e., placing a carefully cropped picture of a player on top of a synthetically created background. The bright white spots around some players appear to be artificially created.

Someone who might help with the mystery of these pins would be the photograph (or maybe card) collectors. If those images were not shot in a studio, they came from somewhere. I think the creator of these pins had these photographs, cropped and layered them in a photo studio, and then found a pin making company to produce them.

[thansen30]

Very much agree that getting the ballplayers into the studio seems unlikely. But the high quality of the photography is what makes me think it was a controlled setting. Funny you mention bringing along their uniforms--if you look closely at the Joe Pepitone pin, he's wearing his home top and his road pants!

[ooo-ribay]

Originally Posted by bigj7489

Kicking myself right now...

A few years back I saw a bunch of these in a bin, a buck each or so, at a twice-annual Peddler's Faire in Coarsegold, CA.

Kick yourself a little more. This guy just went for $411 on ebay.

[71buc]

I paid $500 for mine a couple of years ago. I was after this one too but couldn't pull the trigger for a duplicate. For what its worth, I believe this is only the 4th one of these I have ever seen. There is also a version that does not have the autograph. I have only seen one of those.

[ooo-ribay]

Also, FWIW, I think these can be narrowed done to 1969-72 based on the players included.