Bazooka Billy

I've dipped my toes into the Bazooka pool.

This is the 1971 Bazooka card of Billy Williams, which was added to my Billy player collection.  The picture was taken at Shea in 1970.


Bazooka put baseball cards on the bottom of boxes of penny gum from 1959 through 1971.  For the most part, the cards were in 3 player panels.  The set sizes varied from 36 cards (12 panels) to 48 cards (16 panels).  The cards were smaller than the standard baseball card though their size varied over the years.


As a kid, I bought Bazooka gum all the time.  Made by Topps, Bazooka gum was so much better than the baseball card gum.  I even saved the comics and sent away for the prizes.  I got a pocket knife and an "exploding" battle ship from Bazooka.

These comics (Canadian versions...couldn't find any decent pictures of the American version) feature my wonderful prizes.  


But I never bothered to look on the bottom of the box the gum was sold in.  In fact, it never occurred to me to buy a whole box of gum.  It was always just a few cents worth.  So I never saw any of the baseball cards on the box.


Over the years I missed out on 26 different Cubs cards.  Billy was in six sets, Ron Santo made seven, and Ernie Banks showed up five times.  I haven't seen too many of these on ebay over the years, so I don't know how many I'll try to get.  I would like to add an Ernie Banks card to my player collection, but the ones on Ebay right now are way out of my price range.  I think these Bazooka cards will be long term projects.


Should I ever decide to go after all of the cards, here is what I'm looking for:

1959	3	Ernie Banks
1960	1	Ernie Banks
1960	24	Richie Ashburn
1960	32	Glen Hobbie
1961	3	Ron Santo
1961	19	Ernie Banks
1962	32	Ernie Banks
1962	34	Ron Santo
1963	3	Ernie Banks
1963	27	Ken Hubbs
1964	17	Billy Williams
1964	28	Dick Ellsworth
1965	2	Larry Jackson
1965	17	Billy Williams
1965	28	Ron Santo
1966	39	Ron Santo
1966	48	Billy Williams
1967	39	Ron Santo
1967	48	Billy Williams
1968	23	Ken Holtzman
1968	28	Fergie Jenkins
1968	50	Ron Santo
1968	51	Ron Santo
1968	58	Billy Williams
1971		Randy Hundley
1971		Billy Williams

Phil Cavarretta Autograph

For the first time in nearly four months, I've added another Cub from the past to my autographed card collection.  The main reason for the slowdown is that I've already got an autographed card from most of the players I want.  At this point, I'm only go after the occasional card I chance upon that strikes my fancy.

This one did, of Chicago native and Cubs hero Phil Cavarretta.  If you want to learn more about Cavarretta, you can take a look at this post, written the day after he died at age 94 in 2010.

The card is from a set the Cubs released in 1999, their All Century Team set.  The cards were given away at Wrigley Field in three sets over three different dates.  Each set contained seven cards, making a total of 21 cards in the complete set.

I'm leery about buying on-card autographs because you just have no idea if the signature is real or not.  If you've ever read Operation Bullpen, you'll understand my leeriness.  The story with the Cavarretta card was that it was obtained by the seller's mother TTM.  Mom had passed away and the seller wanted to allow someone else the chance to enjoy the card.  Sound plausible.  Plus, is there enough of a market for Phil Cavarretta autographs that someone would bother to sell fakes?  I doubt it.

I decided to watch the auction and see what would happen.  The starting price was $2.99 and if things didn't go crazy, I figured it was worth a shot.  Well, not much happened.  One person bid on it, and then I sniped it at the end.  I got it for $3.54, which seemed reasonable.

I looked though my cards and found a couple with Cavarretta's facsimile signature, the Bowman and Topps '52.  I've got the three lined up together and you can judge for yourself whether mine is the real deal.

The Bowman is on top, mine is in the middle, and Topps is on the bottom.  Obviously, he signed "Phil" on mine, not "Phillip."  But otherwise, they seem to match up.

I'll consider this $3.54 that was well-spent.

Tile Tuesday: All the Upper Deck Cubs

Many of you seemed to enjoy when I combined all of the Topps Cubs, and I had some requests for more brands.  Today I'm introducing Tile Tuesday.  Each week you can expect to see a tiled version of a whole bunch of Cubs cards.  I'll kick things off with the Upper Deck Cubs.  Since UD had just 22 years of releases, I've put them all together with one post.

Right away when you look at these you notice how the photography was the focus of the card.  The card's design is hardly noticeable.  This is quite different from Topps, especially the Topps cards through the '70s.  With those, the color and the design seemed to pop out at you.  With Upper Deck, its the player.

Since Upper Deck had only a few years of update sets, I've included those cards here. All together there are 584 cards from Upper Deck 1989 - 2010.

For a closer look at the cards, click on the Upper Deck logo and you'll be taken to my Photobucket album with all of the Upper Deck Cubs.

1989 - 2010

Topps 1969 - 2011 Complete Set Prices

Here is my monthly look at set prices for all the year in which I have a complete set, 1969 - 2011.


I ran into a new wrinkle this month.  A few sellers have gone to free shipping on their sets.  For my comparisons I use the completed sale price.  Free shipping will skew those sets prices since the seller has to build in the shipping cost into the price.  Shipping a complete set of several hundred cards is not something that can be done on the cheap.  I'll have to wait and see if free shipping becomes more prevalent.


Some really high-end 1970 and 1971 sets were sold at prices well above recent month averages.


Prices of some recent sets (2007 - 2010) were really down this month.


If you want to buy one of each, it will cost you $7,307.96.  That is an increase of $886.13 over last month.

YEAR	June 1, 2012	May 3, 2012	April 4, 2012	12 Mo. Avg.
1969	$1,340.55	$1,300.00	$1,652.33	$1,159.26
1970	$1,539.59	$749.73	$722.35	$923.17
1971	$1,097.97	$621.37	$780.98	$847.75
1972	$1,078.60	$1,243.25	$888.35	$993.85
1973	$390.55	$474.00	$317.74	$403.56
1974	$226.26	$188.70	$288.00	$237.08
1975	$319.03	$292.30	$285.59	$276.56
1976	$161.40	$180.51	$209.00	$171.53
1977	$108.41	$153.61	$155.98	$130.19
1978	$86.84	$105.07	$110.13	$95.31
1979	$88.82	$85.42	$107.28	$83.37
1980	$84.60	$63.21	$71.19	$65.31
1981	$25.32	$41.14	$30.31	$30.13
1982	$36.99	$37.22	$33.50	$38.35
1983	$32.99	$39.59	$33.10	$33.60
1984	$23.18	$58.89	$18.70	$26.42
1985	$31.09	$27.52	$27.39	$26.13
1986	$15.45	$12.16	$15.30	$13.98
1987	$13.71	$6.40	$8.19	$9.91
1988	$4.95	$5.52	$11.77	$7.98
1989	$12.78	$7.66	$6.50	$6.76
1990	$8.49	$2.80	$9.68	$7.75
1991	$7.47	$10.05	$14.40	$9.86
1992	$17.19	$5.80	$10.11	$10.28
1993	$31.39	$20.08	$22.09	$23.08
1994	$19.18	$29.98	$23.50	$22.57
1995	$30.79	$56.56	$36.46	$46.77
1996	$28.37	$37.79	$20.89	$22.08
1997	$31.34	$59.39	$34.12	$43.24
1998	$40.43	$58.79	$42.80	$43.45
1999	$27.59	$28.47	$17.56	$23.91
2000	$22.09	$21.43	$21.10	$20.68
2001	$53.86	$61.76	$69.00	$55.93
2002	$25.80	$35.82	$41.49	$33.58
2003	$39.51	$31.25	$41.90	$34.14
2004	$29.64	$23.44	$25.80	$27.23
2005	$30.01	$36.06	$27.66	$29.94
2006	$20.30	$29.01	$29.98	$23.55
2007	$16.62	$32.07	$24.56	$21.27
2008	$15.76	$33.93	$36.80	$28.70
2009	$34.29	$58.62	$46.79	$41.32
2010	$22.70	$25.23	$39.57	$41.32
2011	$36.05	$30.24	$33.79	$30.68

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 10,497 Cubs cards from 68 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.  This week the RNG liked Topps.

1950s / 1960s: Topps 1968 #219 Rob Gardner The Cubs picked up the lefty from the Mets in June, 1967 and he spent the last half of the season in Chicago.  He was 0-2 in 18 games.  He went to spring training with the Cubs in 1968, but was traded to the Indians in late March.  He spent most of the season in AAA and then got a September call-up with the Tribe.

1970s: Kelloggs 1978 #48 Bruce Sutter The random number generator pulls a Kelloggs card for the second time in a row!  Sutter saved 28 games in 1978 and also posted an 8-10 record.  He made the All Star team and got the win, pitching 1 2/3 innings and striking out two.  

1980s: Topps 1986 #125 Dave Lopes My apologies to Night Owl and GCRL for this selection.  It looks strange to me too.  Right color, wrong logo.  Lopes was with the Cubs through mid-July of '86 before being traded to the Astros.  During that time he played in 59 games and hit .299.  Even better, he stole 17 bases, which isn't bad for a 41-year-old.

1990s: Topps 1993 #156 Sammy Sosa Rockies Logo Last fall I picked up the Rockies and Marlins parallel cards for all the Cubs.  Topps put out specially marked sets to commemorate these expansion team's first season.  It seems like a good idea for the Rockies players, but a dumb idea to have a Cub card with a Rockies logo on it.  

1993 Rockies inaugural season logo

In 1993 Sosa became the Cubs first 30/30 player with 33 homers and 36 stolen bases.  Sammy also came close to setting another Cub record by striking out 135 times, second all time and missing the record by only 8 Ks.  He would shatter the team record with 174 strikeouts in 1997.

2000s: Topps 2011 #582 Kosuke Fukudome Limited Edition  Two parallels in a row from the number generator.  This card is from the limited edition complete set that Topps gave to those who earned enough points in the Diamond Anniversary giveaway.  The Cubs finally gave up on Jim Hendry's $48 million bust by trading him to the Indians in late July, 2011.  And what do you get in return for a $48 million man?  Abner Abreu and Carlton Smith, two guys that aren't even in the Cubs system anymore.  

2012 Archives Cubs

Before I get to the cards, my thoughts on Topps Archives...

....200 cards in the base set, and only three Cubs. 200÷30=6.67 The Cubs got only half of their allotment. Boo!

...The cardboard is waaayyyy to flimsy. The originals were a much thicker, stronger stock. Boo!

...As always with these reprint type sets, Topps hasn't come up with an exact duplicate of the original. It's always very obvious to me that the cards don't match the originals and I can't stand the mismatch. Boo!

...two Cubs out of 41 in the All Time Fan Favorites is ok, and even better, one of the two is Bill Buckner! Yea!

...only one Cub out of 50 in the reprints. Boo!

...Still no Topps love for HOFer Ron Santo. He was included in all three years of the original All-Time Fan Favorites, so its not like Topps hasn't done him before. But I don't understand why they haven't included him in this or any other 2012 product yet. Boo!

That's five Boos and only one Yea. Not good.

Now the cards.

Matt Garza, 1954 design

Geovany Soto, 1971 design

Starlin Castro, 1984 design

All-TIme Fan Favorites, Shawon Dunston, 1990

All-Time Fan Favorites, Bill Buckner, 1982

Reprint, Fergie Jenkins, 1967

Right Guy Wrong Number

This is a companion post to yesterday.  Here I've got cards of players wearing the wrong uniform number.  Both of these show players very early in their career.  The pictures are spring training shots, taken before they made the major league roster.

Cubs fans know Mark Grace as #17.  But his first Topps card shows a very young Mark Grace

wearing a scrub number, #53.  This is strictly a spring training number.  When he came to the majors in May, 1988, he wore #28 for his first three games.  The Cubs were on the road at the time and I'd guess they didn't have many numbers available.  When they returned home, Grace got #17, which he wore for the first time on May 6.  He would wear that number the rest of his career.

Here is Ronnie Cedeno wearing a scrub number, #68.  Most ballplayers prefer to not share a number with an offensive lineman.  

Cedeno wore #5 for most of his time with the Cubs.  Based on his performance, it would have been OK for him to continue to wear #68.  Luckily, his time with the Cubs was fairly brief and good 'ol E6 is currently the Mets' problem.