Thursday, May 20, 2010

1969 Topps Baseball Stamp Album #5, Atlanta Braves

Spiritual cousin (and one-year predecessor) to the 1970 Topps Story booklets, today's set is actually a combination of two 1969 issues, stamp sheets and stamp albums. They include 10 players per team and come in standard card size, 2.5" x 3.5". Number 5 features the Atlanta Braves, home team of Hank Aaron...and some other guys. :-)


Topps issued the stamps in their own wax packs, with a 12-player sheet (folded down to 4-player size) and one team album for 5 cents. Some sheets unfold vertically, similar to the 1960 Bazooka Stamps, and others horizontally. Each one contains a mix of teams; 24 teams at 10 players each equals 240 stamps for the full set.

Only 200 homers to go!



Bonus! Team autographs

Baseball added 4 new cities in 1969 and its accompanying expansion draft moved a lot of guys from team-to-team. MLB wanted to connect fans to their new players ASAP; Topps took the cue and created two such sets, these stamp albums and the (much larger) team posters.

Value: Full stamp sheets run $10 and up, depending on the players pictured. Albums cost a lot less, typically under $5. Set notables include Mickey Mantle (in his final year) and the Miracle Mets.

Fake / reprints: The albums would be easy to fake, but probably not worth doing. (You'd also need glue-back paper for the stamps.) I haven't seen reprints for either in the market.

2 comments:

Jonathan @ RGB Cards said...

Look at that picture of Tito Francona. He looks so much like his son (or is it that Terry looks so much like his father?)

Matthew Glidden said...

Good point! Easy to forget how good Tito was with the bat, too. Anyone who put up a career .272 average playing mostly in the moribund 1960s gets my respect.