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Saturday, June 18, 2011

June Vintage Show Top Ten #8

Two of my favorite things in one card: 1960 Topps and the Ol' Perfessor.

1960 Topps #227 Casey Stengel


Look at this wonderfully beat up old mess. The card is looking rough too. Yankees are always at a premium when buying vintage cards, but thankfully the rich card snobs who love snapping up Yanks don't like the crummy grades. You know, the ones where PSA sends the card back to you ungraded  along with a restraining order. This is one of those cards. Big ol' crease right across the NY logo, another going right through his schnozz and grimy scuff marks everywhere. Looks like a Red Sox fan got a hold of this one. There was actually two of these in the bargain box. This scuffed up hot mess and one that was so worn that it had corners rounder than playing cards. I chose this one for some reason.


1960 Topps manager cards have completely cartoonized backs. Some of the other manager's cartoons have fairly generic faces drawn but not Stengel's. The artist made sure that Casey's cartoon looked as much as the Old Man of the Mountain as possible. Even the cartoon of his World Series exploits makes him look like a craggy Dick Tracy villain. The artist's tour de force in this set has to be Casey explaining exactly how he won all those pennants to a nonplussed Oscar Madison. "It's a habit I developed... George Weiss keeps sending me Hall of Famers, and I keep winning pennants..."  Note carefully that Casey was once the manager of my beloved Braves! Remember when Joe Torre was hired as manager of the Yankees and everyone was like " Torre? THAT bum? How the hell did he get the job? Got some incriminating pictures of George or something?" Yeah, it was pretty much the same thing for Casey after managing the hapless Braves (and Bees). I still claim Casey as a bona-fide Brave. Now I gotta track down his 1940 Play Ball card.

3 comments:

Scott Crawford said...

"...and that's how I met your wife."

Anonymous said...

sweet card dude!! can't find a ton o' yankees cards now dayz cuz every one is cussin' em' im eleven years old an' im wise nuf'
2 see that yanks is truly a good team better than the dumb red sox. so any how if you were to price the card how much would it be just out of curriosity. because some cards are really expensive! one day i saw a card on ebay that was 2,500 dollars! if yours is more than that id be danged!

Anonymous said...

sweet card dude!! can't find a ton o' yankees cards now dayz cuz every one is cussin' em' im eleven years old an' im wise nuf'
2 see that yanks is truly a good team better than the dumb red sox. so any how if you were to price the card how much would it be just out of curriosity. because some cards are really expensive! one day i saw a card on ebay that was 2,500 dollars! if yours is more than that id be danged!