Philly gas stations repurposed Eureka stamps

Many vintage collectors are familiar with the 1949 Eureka Sportstamps issue of 1949. The set featured 200 color photo stamps, about 1-1/2" x 2" picturing 198 National League players along with Commissioner Happy Chandler and N.L. President Ford Frick. An album to house the stamps was also issued.

In the package of material sent for cataloging purposes by Maryland collector Al Moore, we found a scarce collectible that shows how these stamps were used as a promotion by a chain of Philadelphia gas stations.

Fifteen of the stamps were found folded up in a 3" x 5" red-printed, white paper envelope indicating they were distributed with a purchase at one of the nearly two dozen Calso (Standard Oil of California) gas stations operated by Kirschner Brothers.

There's nothing on the envelope that specifies the number of stamps it contained, so it's unknown whether the 10 New York Giants and five Boston Braves stamps in Al's envelope represent the usual contents. A penciled "10" on the back flap of the envelope raises speculation that the original complement of give-away stamps might have been 10. That would have allowed the set of 200 stamps to be evenly distributed within 20 envelopes.

The front of the envelope indicates that the Sportstamp album could be purchased at the gas station.

We'd never previous heard of the Eureka stamps being used by a third party for promotional purposes, but it represents just one of the many baseball card/collectible giveaways that were used as traffic builders by gas stations all over the country from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Now, the big question . . . why was there no corresponding American League Sportstamps issue?

Brewers customs continue w/1977 Cooper

As mentioned in an earlier posting, I'm devoting much of custom card making time this month to filling in some gaps in the body of Milwaukee Brewers cards of the mid- to late-1970s.

My second effort takes the form of a 1977 Topps-style card of Cecil Cooper in Brewers livery.

Of course Coop had a card in 1977 Topps, #235, depicting him as a member of the Boston Red Sox.

However, in December, 1976, Cooper was traded from Boston to Milwaukee for Bernie Carbo and George Scott (who had once been a roadblock to Cooper's progress in getting to the Red Sox).

By the time of the trade, however, the presses had probably already been rolling on Topps' 1977 card set, and since the gum company no longer issued cards in series, and updates weren't yet an annual production, there was no 1977 Topps card of Cecil Cooper as a Brewer -- until now.

Topps did make a half-assed attempt to update Coop's card for the O-Pee-Chee set later in the year, but instead of using a new photo, they airbrushed Brewers colors and a logo onto the Red Sox photo.

While he never had the fan following in Milwaukee that Molitor and Yount did, Cooper was an integral part of Harvey's Wallbangers in the early 1980s, and a big reason they made it to the play-offs in 1981 and the World Series in 1982. He provided a quiet veteran leadership presence in the clubhouse, and timely hits on the field.

With Milwaukee, Cooper batted .302 between his 1977 arrival and his retirement after the 1987 season. Between 1977-83, he averaged more than 22 home runs per season.

With Milwaukee, Coop led the American League in doubles with 44 in 1979, and 35 in 1981. He led the league in RBIs in 1980 (122) and 1983 (126). He was a Gold Glove winner in 1979-80 and won the Silver Slugger at first base in 1980, 1981 and 1982. He was an All-Star in 1979-80, 1982-83 and 1985, and in the top five in MVP balloting in 1980, 1982 and 1983.


        1977 Topps            977 O-Pee-Chee

 In 1983, his efforts in the community earned Cooper the MLB Roberto Clemente Award.

Cooper's lifetime statistics closely parallel those of Don Mattingly, but like Donny Ballgame, Cooper is unlikely to ever gain admission to the Hall of Fame, largely due to his lack of productivity in post-season play.

With Boston in the 1975 ALCS, Coop hit .400 against the A's, but in the World Series, could muster only a .050 mark against the Reds. In 1981-82 with Milwaukee, he hit only .227 in the post-season. 

While acquiring the photo of Cooper in his early Brewers days, I also found some nice circa 1971 photos of Cooper with the Red Sox. Someday I may work up a 1971-style "rookie" card.

When Feller pedaled Roadmaster bikes

Among the goodies that collector Al Moore sent for possible use in future editions of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards (see entry for March 1), is featured this time around.


Even though we had already cataloged this item some years back, I don't think it has ever been properly shared with the hobby.


The piece in question is a circa 1948 premium photo of late Hall of Famer Bob Feller issued as a promotion for Roadmaster bicycles. The 8x10" black-and-white picture was advertised as being available for 10 cents via a mail-in offer found in various magazines aimed at youngsters.


Feller did a lot of advertising for The Cleveland Welding Company in the 1940s and early 1950s. As seen by the list of features on the back of the premium photo, the Luxury Liner mus have been a top-of-the-line bicycle. It was produced from 1948-1953 by the Cleveland manufacturer.


This premium is one of at least nine different featuring six players. Three versions of the Feller premium are known. On the earliest photo, in the same format and with about the same pose and facsimile autograph, Feller is shown in the home uniform worn by the Indians from about 1940-1944. That premium is blank-backed. A later picture, showing Feller standing besides a bicycle, appears be part of a group issued in 1951. The other players featured in that issue are Willie Mays, Pee Wee Reese, Eddie Stanky, Phil Rizzuto, Tommy Henrich and Allie Reynolds. All pictures except the 1948 Feller that is the principal subject here are blank-backed. 

Values for the photos probably range from about $125-175 in VG for most of the players, up to $300-400 in NM. Mays would probably bring at least twice that.

In poking around the internet for information, I found that in 1998, Cleveland Welding issued a 50th anniversary edition of the Roadmaster Luxury Liner. It appears that 5,000 bikes were produced, and may have carried a retail price of up to $3,000. Today they seem to be widely available for $800 or so.

Scrapbook set added to O's opus

The most significant item in a care package (see March 1 entry) of catalog stuff sent in by collector Al Moore of Maryland is a set of "Oriole Scrapbook" cutouts.

I'm unsure whether the set will actually be included in the 2012 edition of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, but it should at least be presented in this forum for your entertainment and education, and to preserve the data for future hobbyists. Team specialists and player collectors relish this type of discovery.

The reason I'm hesitant to commit to adding the set to the big book is that, with the proliferation of information about previously obscure cards and collectibles available on the internet, I have to be more diligent than ever to preserve the space available in the printed edition of the catalog to those items that most closely fit the definition of "baseball card." Perhaps someday a vintage-only version of the Standard Catalog may be feasible, or perhaps a CD with the full vintage data base.

This set of O’s cutouts was printed during spring training prior to the 1960 season, though in what newspaper and how many per day is unknown. The pictures are printed in black-and-white in a size of about 3-1/2” x 6-3/8”. Each picture has a dotted line to define its borders. Within are a player portrait photo, facsimile autograph, biographical details and a career summary.

Besides a few players I don't recall ever seeing on a card or collectible, such as Bob Reidel and Chuck Stanliand, the set is notable for what are likely the first card/memorabilia pieces for Orioles star Boog Powell and future Los Angeles/California Angels pitching ace Dean Chance.

Here's the checklist:

1 Marvin Breeding
2 Paul Richards
3 Barry Shetrone
4 Fred Valentine
5 Jerry Adair

6 Raymond Barker

7 Leo Burke

8 Ronald Hansen
9 David Nicholson
10 Brooks Robinson
11 Wesley Stock

12 Dean Chance
13 William Gardner
14 Hal Brown
15 Arne Thorsland
16 John Fisher
17 John “Boog” Powell
18 Bobbie Lee Mabe
19 Alfred Nagel
20 Robert Saverine
21 Arnold Portocarrero

22 Walter Coleman

23 Bob Boyd

24 Albert Pearson

25 Gene Woodling

26 William Hoeft

27 Gus Triandos

28 Myron Ginsberg

29 Willie Tasby

30 Gene Green

31 John Powers

32 Art Quirk

33 Charles Staniland

34 Bob Riedel
35 Milt Pappas
36 Steve Barber
37 Gordon Jones

38 Walter Dropo

39 Billy Klaus

40 Jackie Brandt

41 Hoyt Wilhelm

42 Jerry Walker

43 Al Pilarcik

44 John Anderson

45 Charles Estrada

46 Luman Harris

47 Harry Brecheen
48 James A. Adair

49 Clinton D. Courtney

1974 Yount begins Brewers custom card binge

With baseball season fast approaching, my custom card creation inspiration is turning towards the national pastime.

I've found some great photos of some of my favorite Milwaukee Brewers players of the 1970s, and will be spending some time working up cards for them.

Since I already had a template made from my 1974-style George Brett card, I decided to start with a 1974 Robin Yount "rookie" card, predating his actual Topps rookie by a year.

There's not really too much to say about the card's creation. If Topps had a better crystal ball and could have predicted the 18-year-old Yount would take over as the regular Brewers shortstop in 1974, they might have created a card like this.

Who would have suspected, though, that the guy would make the jump from short-season Class A ball with the last-place club (Newark Co-pilots) in the Pennsylvania-New York League to the majors?

One conundrum I faced in working up the card back concerns Yount's middle name. Topps cards that year included the player's full name: first, middle, last.

But there is some question as to whether Yount had a middle name. His "official" baseball biographies -- the Hall of Fame, Baseball Almanac and SABR data base -- list only a middle initial "R".  There are many citations on the internet, however, that state his middle name was Rachel. Topps, on its 1975 rookie card, went with the Robin R. Yount name. I decided that was the way I'd go, as well.

So, if you're a fan of the 1970s Brewers or 1970s baseball cards, keep watching this space for at least three Topps-style Brewers cards that never were.

Robert Urich custom football card

Putting together the back copy for my newest 1955 All-American style custom football card reminded me that, as useful as the internet can be in gathering data, it is also a minefield of misinformation.


It's only been in about the last year that I became aware that 1970s-80s TV star Robert Urich had played college football at Florida State. That made him a perfect candidate for my ever-expanding checklist of '55 custom football cards.

A quick search on eBay landed me a copy of his 1991 Collecgiate Collection card, with a dynamic school publicity photo of Urich in action. That photo appears to be the only known picture of Urich as an FSU player.

The picture was really all I was able to use from that card, though, in making my own. Virtually everything that was written on the back about his Seminole career was wrong. The CC card lists him as a linebacker and as "a member of Florida State's 'Seven Magnificents.'"

In reality, Urich was a backup center, and he wasn't even on the 1964 FSU team's whose shaved-head defensive line and linebackers, the Seven Magnificents, held their opponents to just 85 points in their 9-1-1 season.

Those errors were repeated in various forms on many different web sites and a cursory Google search would have found me compounding the misinformation on my card's write-up.

Fortunately, I found a site (nolefan.org) that reproduced the Florida State Football Handbooks for that era, and was able to obtain essentially first-hand information about Urich's college gridiron days. While Urich was on the 'Noles roster for 1965 and 1966, he appears to have played only in 1965, when a knee to the helmet in the Alabama game effectively ended his playing career.

Urich had been a multi-sport star athlete at his Tornoto (Ohio, not Ontario) high school. His biology teacher there had been football coach when then-current FSU head coach Bill Peterson attended the school. Urich's teacher sent Peterson game films and Urich received a four-year football scholarship to Florida State. After he was knocked off the active roster, Urich continued to serve the team by filming its games.

Urich graduated in 1968 with a B.A. in radio/television communications, then went on to Michigan State where he received a masters degree in Broadcasting Research and Management in 1971.

Working in ad sales at WGN in Chicago, Urich connected with another former FSU football player, Burt Reynolds, who got him a stage role, then invited him to crash at his place in Los Angeles while he pursued an acting career.

In 1973, Urich became the "Bob" in the TV series Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. That role was followed up with starring roles in the series S.W.A.T., as private eye Dan Tanna in Vega$, in Soap, The Lazarus Man, and, perhaps his best-known episodic television role, as the Boston private detective with no first name in the series Spenser: For Hire, based on the novels by Robert B. Parker. In all, Urich had nearly constant work on 15 different weekly series over nearly 30 years.

He interspersed the series work with many made-for-TV movies, including the lead role as Steelers running back Rocky Bleier in Fighting Back, and as Jake Spoon in the miniseries, Lonesome Dove.

While his television commitments kept him busy, Urich found time for several significant movie roles, including Magnum Force, Ice Pirates and Turk 182!.

Urich died at the age of 55 in 2002, of synovial cell sarcoma, a rare form of cancer.

Al Moore shares his stuff

A gray late-winter's day was brightened recently with the arrival of a Priority Mail envelope from Maryland collector Al Moore. The package contained a dozen or so color photocopies of items from his baseball card and memorabilia collection that he wanted to share with collectors via the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. Al is an old-school collector, and doesn't do scans or e-mail, so this a most welcome throw back to the heyday of my work on the big book.


There were some additions to existing checklists, such as Dave Duncan and Paul Blair in the 1976 English's Chicken bucket lids and Del Crandall to the 1953 Top Taste Bread Milwaukee Braves window posters.

There were a few items that we already have cataloged, but for which we lacked pictures. One of those was a Becker Bros. Theatre cards of Jimmy Dykes. This was especially welcome because the advertising on the back of the card allows us to correct the guesstimate of the date of issue from 1930 to a confirmed 1929.

Also in the package were several items that probably won't make it into the catalog, but are worth sharing with you as time permits, just because they're interesting vintage collectibles and because it is so easy to do in a forum such as this.

Al also sent information and a full checklist (49 cards!) for an obscure 1960 Baltimore Orioles issue. We'll be working that up for a presentation in the near future.

Best of all, Al says he will be putting together another package of the really rare stuff for future use. Watch this space in coming days and weeks for some really neat ol' stuff.

By taking the time and making the effort to share this stuff with you in this venue, Al represents the spirit of the hobby the way it should be -- collectors helping collectors.