Offered is a near autographed set of 1965 Topps baseball cards, assembled and held for a long time by an advanced autograph collector. This was a multi-decade endeavor for our consignor, who for the most part, beginning in the 1970s had cards signed in person at shows, and through people he knew who performed private signings. Our consignor used to promote and run shows on the East Coast and made contacts with hundreds of players, promoters and agents. The total amount of signed cards is 570+ with the total amount of (590) signatures. Interestingly, our consignor had multiple signatures on multi-player cards, and usually had the manager or well-known player on the team sign the various team cards. For example, the #8 League leader card of Koufax and Drysdale, have BOTH Koufax and Drysdale signatures on the card. Most of the star cards are signed, including a beautiful #350 Mickey Mantle, graded by PSA/DNA GEM MINT 10.
The cards are signed with a mixture of ball point and/or sharpie, with our consignor having an affinity towards sharpie signed cards when he could. Only about a dozen cards have very light signatures.
A total of FIVE cards have been sent to PSA/DNA for authentication and encapsulation, with all other cards being viewed by James Spence Authentication (JSA) for a complete authentication of the entire near set.
The cards which do not contain any autographs include: #2 LL, 4 LL, 105 Salmon, 131 Keane, 348 Banks, 377 Stargell, 538 Dressen, 544 Reed, 551 Mets (Stengel CH), and 555 Ruiz, plus all checklists. All these cards are included within the set.
The following cards were sent to PSA/DNA for authentication and encapsulation: #134 Mantle WS, 155 Maris, 187 Stengel, 350 Mantle and 485 Fox. BOTH the #134 Mantle WS card and the #350 Mantle were graded PSA GEM MINT 10 by PSA/DNA.
Some of the more difficult cards to obtain, which are part of this lot, include: 5 Mantle LL, 8 Koufax/Drysdale LL, 16 Joe Morgan RC, 57 Cardinals team (signed by Stan Musial), 91 Cubs team (Ernie Banks), 99 Hodges, 100 Ken Boyer, 126 Dodgers team (Alston & Maury Wills), 170 Aaron, 207 Rose, 250 Mays, 282 Giants team (Estelle/Murakami), 300 Koufax, 376 Giants team (Murakami), 426 Braves team (Hank Aaron), 526 Hunter RC.
This is one fully detailed collection, a painstakingly long love affair with the autographed baseball card.
