I'm Balticfox and here's my story!

[Balticfox]

Meanwhile I've acquired an ever greater appreciation and interest in knuckleball pitchers and base stealers over the last ten years or so. Since my baseball card collection is limited to the 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1965 years, I may well need to expand it to include a sheet or two of some of the great knuckleball pitchers and base stealers who played mainly outside those years - Phil Niekro, Joe Niekro, Charlie Hough, Tom Candiotti, Tim Wakefield, R.A. Dickie, Lou Brock, Joe Morgan, Willie Wilson, Bert Campaneris, Tim Raines, Ricky Henderson, Otis Nixon, Vince Coleman, Kenny Lofton, Marquis Grissom, José Reyes, etc.

Legendary knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm and base stealers Maury Wills and Luis Aparicio have of course many cards from that 1954-65 period that's been my focus.

[Balticfox]

Card collecting and bubble gum have to me always been closely intertwined. And while I was a regular buyer of both Bazooka and Dubble Bubble penny briquettes as a kid, gumball vending machines also drew my pennies. The 1958 CFL wrapper actually had a side ad for Bozo gumballs:



I've now had this Bozo machine in my collection for nearly twenty years:





Just over a year ago I added this new old stock variant of the Bozo machine to my collection:





It can be seen from this sticker on the bottom that O-Pee-Chee lent these Bozo machines free of charge to retailers so long as they were refilled with none other than Bozo gumballs:



Ken's Variety on Wharncliffe Road near Elmwood Avenue in London had a Bozo machine on the counter for many years throughout at least the 1960's. Ken's was a treasure trove of kids' stuff including cards, comics, model kits, Pez dispensers, bobble-head dolls of CFL players, Silverwood's ice cream cones (two scoops for a dime!), Krun-Chee Potato Chips (a less common brand than Hostess or Shirriff in London at the time), Black Cat Bubble Gum and of course the obligatory Beaver gumball vending machines. I have two of the Beaver machines in my present day collection which I fill with the requisite gold and silver charms as well as gumballs:



It was Beaver that dominated the gumball machine market in Canada just as Acorn dominated the one in the States.



I remember that the lucky recipient of a special silver ball from the Beaver machine outside Ken's Variety won a pair of wild cool Skeleton Hands like these:

(Not mine.)

Sadly I never succeeded in scoring the Skeleton Hands. There's been a void in my life ever since.

And I still dream of adding a classic card vending machine to my collection some day:

(Not mine.)

Collecting to me is all about the memories and keeping those memories alive. I cherish the memories as a part of my very being which is why I don't want to let them go.

[jingram058]

"Collecting to me is all about the memories and keeping those memories alive. I cherish the memories as a part of my very being which is why I don't want to let them go."

^^^ This! ^^^

[Balticfox]

There was a classic New York style candy store on Richmond Street in downtown London directly across the street from St. Peter's School where I was obligated by my parents to attend extracurricular Lithuanian language classes between 4:00 and 5:30 Saturday afternoons. Davis Variety was its name. It had the obligatory lunch counter which the fellow worked himself. I was never drawn to get anything at the lunch counter though (not that I would have had the money anyway of course). Unlike the lunch counters at the downtown Metropolitan, Kresge and Woolworth stores, it was pretty spartan and dingy and just didn't appeal to me. Mr. Davis himself was almost a comic book caricature of the old guy working a hot grill and his lunch counter never seemed to have any customers on Saturday afternoons. He probably got the bulk of his business frying up breakfast and lunch for the teachers at St. Peter's. And of course everybody smoked and read newspapers in those days including the teachers and the respective bishops, priests and staff at the adjacent St. Peter's Basilica and St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral.

The Davis Variety had most everything else to tempt a young boy with a quarter or two in his pocket though. It was one of the very few stores I knew that stocked Black Cat Bubble Gum which was licorice flavoured and was somehow chewier than Bazooka or even Dubble Bubble. I remember happily chewing on Black Cat and blowing black bubbles for hours!



I also very clearly remember buying Topps Civil War News cards at Davis Variety:





Plus of course Baseball cards such as these from 1963:







And these from 1965:



The wooden magazine rack was located on the other side of the store from the lunch counter and was thus well situated to sneak a peak at the titty mags:

(Sadly not mine.)

There would of course have been something wrong with any young boy who wouldn't peruse pictures of bare naked women given a chance. In fact, I'm sure that the priests from St. Peter's and St. Paul's, if not the bishops themselves, would have been taking the occasional peak as well.

It was at the Davis Variety's magazine rack though where I first encountered Green Lantern #26, 28 and 29 and the excitement I felt seeing those issues for the first time is still seared in my mind to this very day. In fact, I'm sure those comics are the reason why I still remember Davis' so vividly.







While St. Peter's and St. Paul's cathedrals are still there, 1979 was the last year for St. Peter's School and the Davis Variety has also been gone for decades. I did get a chocolate milkshake that really wasn't very good at Davis' one time but sadly I never got to sample a cheeseburger. Like they say, you never know what you've got till it's gone.

[Balticfox]

It was back in 1979 that I set out to re-acquire the treasures of my formative years. I was aware of only two comic shops in Toronto that carried cards in 1979-81. One was Comics Unlimited on Keewatin Avenue just east of Yonge Street at which I purchased my first Non-Sport sets - Funny Valentines and Funny Valentines A:









The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Drag Nationals and Official Drag Champs quickly followed. The other store with cards was Queen’s Comics & Collectibles on Queen Street just east of Woodbine Avenue. Cards were also available at Dreamland Comics in Hamilton on James Street North. When I saw NM sets of the 1959, 1960, 1963 and 1964 Topps CFL cards one day in 1981 I couldn’t reach for my wallet quickly enough!

1959



1960



1963



I later learned that there was also a stamp/coin shop in Hamilton just north of Dreamland that dealt in cards so perhaps there might have been a couple of other such shops in Toronto of which I wasn’t aware.

Dedicated card shows didn’t make an appearance in Toronto (and perhaps anywhere in Canada) until about 1986 and they were then really low budget affairs held in less than first class halls/meeting rooms. I also remember being actually excited to learn that another (my second) card show was going to take place in far away Niagara Falls in 1987(?).

Here's a picture of legendary Canadian card collector Angelo Savelli of Hamilton set up at a card show in Scarborough(eastern Toronto) circa 1986:



I might have missed that particular show because I was out of town. I'd made Angie's acquaintance at an earlier show though and had followed that up by visiting him at his home in Hamilton where I bought a set of the first series of the 1969 Topps Football cards from him. (This was back when I thought I could have every card Topps had ever issued!)

Just a few years thereafter in the late 1980's newspapers and other media sources started running stories about the prices fetched by the T206 Honus Wagner and 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards and card collecting absolutely exploded in popularity with the general public. By about 1992 or so Angie himself opened a "King of Cards" store on Barton Street in Hamilton which I'd visit on occasion. His store was actually on the way (maybe a two mile walk) to Ivor Wynn Stadium from the GO train stop in the magnificent old Hamilton Harbour CN station. After any Hamilton Tiger-Cats game I could then walk briskly to the old Greyhound station on Cannon Street and catch the last Lakeshore GO bus which would let me off after 45 minutes or so right in front of my house in SW Mississauga.

On one of my visits to Angie's store circa 2000, I learned that he was keeping his T206 Honus Wagner card in his safety deposit box at the bank. When I asked whether he ever thought of selling it since he couldn't exactly derive any delight from owning it when it was locked away at the bank, he replied "Every day, Vay, every day." Within six months to a year, he had done exactly that with a sale of all his Sports cards but Hockey and CFL to a big California dealer.

Those days were certainly different, albeit not necessarily better. The internet has certainly done wonders to put collectibles and collectors together.

[BobbyStrawberry]

Thanks for sharing - I've never seen those Funny Valentine cards before.

[Balticfox]

While I didn't have the money to collect the Funny Valentine cards when they were first issued, I've been a big fan of them ever since. Here are scans of my wrappers from the above two Funny Valentines sets:

1959





A 1960



And here's the display box O-Pee-Chee used in Canada:



I also have the original art to one of the cards from the 1959 release which is hanging on the wall in my collectibles den:



Topps followed up these regular sized card issues with a Giant Funny Valentines set in 1961:





Topps then reissued the Giant Funny Valentines in 1966 or 1967 with darker red backs and O-Pee-Chee followed suit in Canada using grey instead of white car stock. Here's a side-by-side comparison of a Topps back on the left and an O-Pee-Chee back on the right:



I've completed the previous sets but I still need most of the cards from the 1966(1967?) Topps issue and cards #8 and #44 from the 1966(1967?) O-Pee-Chee issue. Here's the 1966(1967?) Topps wrapper:



The artwork for the Funny Valentines cards was done by legendary illustrator Jack Davis who did a lot of work for Topps including the fabled You'll Die Laughing set from 1959:



Plus the backs of the 1960-61 Hockey cards:





Jack Davis is also well known for his artwork in the EC stable of publications,e.g. Mad magazine:



He also illustrated 23 TV Guide covers and 25 Time magazine covers:



(Time magazines not mine.)

Best of all is perhaps the cover he did for Creepy 1: