Live, Love, Laugh(lin)...

[toppcat]

From The Trader Speak June 1970:

[toppcat]

Trader Speaks July 1971, still at it:

[laughlinfan]

Nicely centered 67 Mantle, Elm! That's a beauty! And thanks for posting that Trader Speaks ad, Dave! Bob had gotten some of his artwork published in the Sporting News in 65-67 (including one cover!) and was really kicking into his baseball phase of his work by 1967. He had done illustrations for some comic books and magazines in the 50s and 60s, and started dabbling in baseball cartoon artwork, combining his two passions. He started his set in 1967 and was intending to do 63 cards - 1903 -1966. Skipping over the 1904 No Series year, he printed them in sheets of 9 each, so 7 sheets of 9. As you can see by the back of Elm's nice Bob Gibson above, he decided to do a little extension and added in the 1967 card as well, and changed the layout of the bottom of that card to be "No. 64 ... Write for the entire set of 64" All of the other cards still referenced a set of 63. He produced 250-300 sets in total of his 1967 set, distinguished by the second line on the bottom including his address. Of those, he left some in uncut sheets of 9 which you see from time to time. Fun fact - when Bob printed them up, maybe intending to produce 500-600 sets, he realized the card stock was too thin for cards, so he glued 2 sheets together to make them thicker (taking us down to 250-300 sets). You will sometimes see cards for sale "with glue on the back" or "with glue on the front" - these are of course half cards, as over the years, the glue has dried out and some have separated. A set of 1967s just went a week or two ago on the 'Bay where a good run of the first several cards were half cards. Was still a nice looking set!

Happy collecting!

[JollyElm]

That's weird, Marty. When you've referred to Mr. Laughlin 'thickening up' (my term) the cards in the past, I didn't realize you meant he actually glued one card right on top of another card. Wow! Mind blown. I have some with the glue on back, but I assumed it was a result of affixing the cards to an album page...even though the thin stock would've precluded anyone from successfully removing them from said album without heavy damage. This set grows more and more interesting by the day.

Do you (or anyone else reading this) have a #61 Mantle card with the address on back that you could post here? The larger the better. I'm doing some (perhaps fruitless) research, and the only example of the card w/address I can find on-line is the one I posted here.

[toppcat]

March 1972 Trader Speaks, what a deal-framed and matted to boot!

[laughlinfan]

Dug out a couple of Mantles for comparison - the 1967 version and the 1974 version. Hope that's what you were looking for, Elm!

[laughlinfan]

Nice ad, Dave! Had I HAD $10 as a young kid (which was a lot back then, especially for this kid!), I would have had a hard time picking which card artwork I would go after. I may have gone with my heart to grab the 69 Mets artwork, or maybe a Ruth, Feller, or Carl Hubbell throwing his screwball, since they were a couple of my favorite old timers!

The Fleer Sticker Blog Spot had a nice picture of one of these matted artwork/card sets, contributed by Troy, I believe, who is on Net54 and commented on this thread. Maybe he will be kind enough to post a pic? I have one of a 1970 card and artwork that is matted, but it is fairly crudely matted, so I doubt that Bob did the matting on it, but it does resemble the one Troy has, I think.

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by laughlinfan

Dug out a couple of Mantles for comparison - the 1967 version and the 1974 version. Hope that's what you were looking for, Elm!

Can you also post the front scan of the 'with address' card, por favor?