Best Of

@Harnessracing said:

@ElMagoStrikeZone said:

@Harnessracing said:

@smallstocks said:
Ugh! I opened a 1977 Topps football Fritsch vending box earlier this year. Roughly 480 of the 500 cards were OC. That ended that game for me.

Yeah, sorry to hear that. I bought a bunch of 77 Baseball vending years ago that were partial cases. I sold many off but broke many too. Still have thousands of the cards all really nice.
I will never buy a Fritsch box ever again

How many is many? Some 20 years ago I busted several vending boxes of '76 and '77 Topps Baseball with rather amazing results. Were you auctioning them as far back as the late 90s? I acquired them in a large haul which came from a third party on consignment at the time. I still have thousands of nice cards, less of course anything that was imminently gradable. Lots of 10s. Good ol' days.

To be honest I want to think I bought them at around $30 a box. Made a few sets. Then sold many in a bulk deal to a gentleman in the late 90s. Didn’t have 76s. All my 76s came from opened vending when Capital Cards liquidated. I bought all there 74’s thru 76s. All the stars were pulled from those and bought in groups of a few hundred.
A lot of the majors we gone like Ryan, Brett Yount etc.
I did get hundreds and sometimes full 800 count boxes of certain stars like 74 Killebrew, 74 Seaver (200-300), 76 Lou Gehrig All Time are a few.
In fact most of these PSA 10s were submitted by me to PSA. Wish I still had them.
69 Koosman
75 Seaver
75 Yaz
75 Jackson ( only 1-10, lots of 9s)
76 Gehrig
Just to name a few.
I remember getting 5-1975 Seaver 10s in one submission and thought people were nuts paying $1200-$1500 each. This was around 2005 or so.
The 69 Koosman’s were in a binder and there were like 10 pages of them. Stunning they were. Who knew they would be a $10000 card now.
10s of thousands of 1968 and 1969 high numbers. All the leftovers from Galasso.
I was 16 when I helped clean out Woody Gelman’s storefront basement in Queens. All those cards went to Capital, Galasso, Al Rosen and another gentleman but I can’t remember his name but he was associated with Tosen for a time. I reminder little white boxes with 1968 series sets, most were the Ernie Banks series. They had a rubber band on them so the first and last few cards were ruined. It’s funny what you remember

We were somewhere further along the distribution chain, but I know we had similar results to what you've described, particularly on the 70s stuff with major stars pulled out, then plenty of second tier stars and commons in monster boxes which seemed endless. You and I were probably competing for a time on eBay during '05 and onward, as I recall you had quite a few 1974 Topps Baseball gems being sold back then. You might remember Ron Oser, an auctioneer whose name was attached to the labels on the monster and 800 count boxes we had. I think that's where most of it was sourced. Another name you might know is Joe DelGrippo, who also was a distributor at the time. We thrived on 1972-73 Topps Basketball and 1973 Topps Football acquired from him. Those are still a couple of my favorite sets to chase to this day thanks to that experience. I also handled a lot of '68 & '69 Topps Baseball commons, so we must have been somehow linked just by accumulating the same merchandise that was actively being marketed by wholesalers.

It IS funny what we remember. One last thought: Negotiating with Al Rosen, MR. MINT, was also something unforgettable. It was never boring dealing with him. I really miss that part of it.