Monday, July 20, 2009

I Don't Really Know What These Are, But I Have A Feeling They Are Pretty Awesome

Last week I was digging into a giant box of cards (probably about 3000) that I really cannot recall the origin of. Really, I don't know where they came from, if they were mine from childhood? There were cards from the late 70's to early 90's and some odd balls that I don't ever recall seeing. Here are the first group of odd balls.

According the the backs, the date is 1980 TCMA - they are made by the Renata Galasso Inc - "The World's Largest Hobby Card Dealer" out of Brooklyn. All of the cards feature players from the early 1900s to about the late 1930s - most of them Hall of Famers - A lot of them are new to me as I have never REALLY delved into the archives to learn a lot about some of these guys before today.

Tris Speaker - OF - Cleaveland Indians - "The Grey Eagle" hit over .300 18 times - HOF 1937

Harry Heilmann - OF - Detroit Tigers - "Slug" led the American League in hitting 4 times .394 in 1921, .403 in 1923, .393 in 1925, and .398 in 1927. HOF 1952

Dazzy Vance - Pitcher - Brooklyn Dodgers - Led the NL in k's 7 straight years, Victories twice, ERA 4 times and shutouts 3 teams - HOF 1955

Burleigh Grimes - Pitcher - Brooklyn Dodgers - The last legal spitball pitcher - 20 game winner 5 times, career 270-212 record - HOF 1964


I've got 12 more of this set and will be rolling them out 4 at a time the rest of the week. Let me know if you know anything else about these cards - they are sorta neat - if any of you see any players that you collect or teams you like - let me know and I'm sure they can find their way to you.

4 comments:

night owl said...

Renata Galasso was the biggest hobby dealer of its time (1970s).

These cards were issued in sets, titled "the 1950s," and "the 1960s," etc. The 1950s I believe was the first one issued. I wanted these cards badly when I was a kid. You could order the whole set through a catalog

I lost track of how many sets there were. But I'm sure you could find out the info pretty quickly.

Anonymous said...

night owl is off on this one here. I'll try to give you the low down on this set.

Renata Galasso/TCMA put out literally hundreds if not thousands of sets during the late 70's and 80's. The 1950's set, 1960's etc. were just some of those issues. TCMA is sometimes better known for issuing all of the minor league cards for the 70's and 80's.

This set is simply cataloged as "1977-84 TCMA/Renata Galasso. It was kind of neat as it was issued in different series but consecutively numbered from 1977 through 1984. The cards you have are from series 3. They were issued in these years at 45 cards per series -
Series 1 - 1977
Series 2 - 1979
Series 3 - 1980
Series 4 - 1981
Series 5 - 1983
Series 6 - 1984

The entire set of 270 only catalogs at around 50 bucks NM, but good luck finding one at hat price. I did find a complete set on Ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/1977-1984-TCMA-Renata-Galasso-Complete-Set-1-270_W0QQitemZ390068650809QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_SM_Sports_Cards?hash=item5ad1e74339&_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116


Thanks,
Justin

night owl said...

I wouldn't say I was "off" (well, not on this anyway). Anon just clarified it a bit.

sociallyawkwardjellyfish said...

I used to own a bunch of those when I was a kid! I think I bought them at toys r us.