Happy Birthday Nate Teut!!!

There was a player on the Marlins named Nate Teut, a pitcher who appeared in only two games back in 2002. He has cards in Bowman, and cards from those other guys, but no cards in the main Topps product. In his two games, one which was a spot start, he pitched through 7.1 innings, allowed 13 hits, 8 earned runs (9.82 ERA), struck out 4 batters, and walked 3 in his extremely brief major league career. He spent nine seasons in the minors, mostly in the Cubs organization, hanging it up for good in 2005.

Well, today is his birthday. Happy 37th Birthday Nate. I hope you have a good one.

Now if you haven't left this article yet, you may be wondering why I'm wishing Nate birthday well-wishes.

You'll have to find out tomorrow at 9:00 am CST to find out why.

Unless of course, you can figure it out and leave what you think my reasons are in the comments.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama

Thanks Scott!!! Looks Like the Mantle Mystery is Solved.

Scott Crawford may have come up with the answer to "Is This Real?: 1956 Bowman Mickey Mantle."

It seems that the card may have been an insert from a Baseball Cards Magazine from October, 1988. The theme was "The Cards that Never Were" and included a 1974 Topps "Washington Nat'l League" Dave Winfield, a 1952 Bowman Jackie Robinson, and the aforementioned 1956 Bowman Mantle.

An auction is on eBay right now for this exact panel with the Mantle card.  Here are the pictures:

That solves the mystery I guess. Unfortunately, because the card is an insert, specifically from a competitor that no longer exists, even The Number One Source in the Hobby won't even price this card. So I'm going to have to inform Mr. Flachs that his card is an insert and might not be worth much.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama

Is This Real?: 1956 Bowman Mickey Mantle

I get emails all the time from people asking about cards and how much they are worth. This one threw me for a loop. After getting permission to post the pictures onto the blog, I am finally getting around to writing this one.

Patrick Flachs sent me this email on Monday, December 31:

I have a Mickey Mantle outfield New York Yankees card. It says #1 anC it is a Bowman card and I think it is 1956. Can't find the value of this card. Hoping you could help. He is holding a bat and looking to the right and it is brown card on the outside in a circled picture.

Thanks

Okay, a few red flags here. Bowman and 1956. Now we all know that Topps acquired Bowman before the company could make a set in 1956. So I responded:

Bowman did not make cards in 1956 as the company was bought by Topps that year. Also, none of Mantle's cards were #1, Topps or Bowman, during his playing days.

Based on your description, you have a 1955 Bowman #202 card (looks like an old tv)...

I asked him to send a scan of the card so I can get a closer look at it. This is what he sent:

What many might not know is that before the acquisition, Bowman sent surveys to boys (about 324) to determine what the design would be for their next baseball product. After surveying kids in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the choices were narrowed down to three: a knothole design, a two-picture design, and a full-bleed design with a black box holding the name, position, and team affiliation which looks similar to their 1953 effort. Books were created in a top-secret file titled "1956 Baseball Card Preference Study." But then Topps bought out Bowman, and these books were thought to be lost to the annals of time. It was not until 1983 when two of these books were found in the personal collection of Woody Gelman, the legendary Topps designer, who had saved these as keepsakes. The books, which were put on auction, sold for $10,440.00.  The Topps Archives also did a feature on these books.

Now Keith Olbermann, to call him a collector is an understatement, also had a copy of this book and brought it to Topps Headquarters. The designs were eventually used to create what is now 2003 Bowman Heritage. The knothole design was used for prospects cards within the set.

Back to the point.

I was stunned. STUNNED. Only because I remembered the history of how the Bowman Heritage set came to be (even though I never collected it, I should have the Beckett magazine somewhere that explains all of it...see, printed magazines are worth something after all). So when I saw the pictures...my jaw dropped. I had never seen this card before, and had to ask him:

Where did you find this card? While Bowman did not have a set because Topps bought them out...The card in your hands (the knothole design) would have been an example of what the 1956 Bowman set would have looked like if they made it...

If the card is indeed authentic, then what you have a real find on your hands as not too many of these cards have ever been seen before. Would you mind if I used your pictures and put them on my blog? I'm sure that there are people out there who would know a lot more about your card than I do.

After looking at the scans, all I can say is, "Wow!"

While Mr. Flachs did not go into specifics as to how he found this card, he did offer to send better pictures. Here they are:

Doing a quick check online, I did find one other picture of this Mantle card. But there is no explanation as to what it is, or anything about it's authenticity.

I also know that Hires Root Beer, in 1958, used this design for their baseball cards. But the checklist starts with #10 (Richie Ashburn), and if you look at the example of the Aaron card below, there is a dash between the position and team name. The Mantle card above uses a comma.  (Mantle was also not on the Hires checklist).

Okay, I am no vintage expert. All I have are old books that focus on cards of the past, and of course, the interwebs. I even went onto the Mantle Baseball Cards website and didn't find anything.

I did tell Mr. Flachs that I would put this on the blog to see if anybody out there can verify the truth of this card's existence, and if so, can give an estimated value on the card if it is fact real.

I wish the guy the best of luck.  If his card can indeed be verified as authentic, he has a real find on his hands.   But can somebody, anybody, provide more insight and information about this card?  I think we could all use the history lesson behind this card.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama

Card That Makes You Go...What??! of the Week: 1996 Bowman Mickey Mantle Reprint #20

1996 Bowman Mickey Mantle Reprint Card #20. If I had not told you that this card could only be found in 1996 Bowman, would you have thought that it was from 1997 Topps???

This week's What??! concerns the fact that Topps threw off many collectors when they ran their Mickey Mantle reprints as inserts in 1997 Topps.

As we all know, 1996 Topps included 19 reprinted insert cards of Mickey Mantle, from his 1951 rookie card to his 1969 final card. As we also know, his 1952 Topps card is not his rookie card. The label of rookie card belongs to Topps' chief rival at the time, Bowman. The 1951 Bowman has a painted picture of a youthful Mantle staring at the heavens, with his name floating within a black bar. Each year he had a card in his playing career was included in this set. His 1951 RC, 1952 Topps, 1953 Topps, 1954 Bowman, 1955 Bowman, 1956-1969 Topps. The two years that Topps didn't have a card of him was because Bowman signed him to an exclusive deal which kept him from appearing on Topps cards. As we finally know, Topps bought out Bowman in 1956, thus returning his rights to the Topps Company. Cards numbered 1-19 were found in 1996 Topps baseball.

In 1997, Topps decided to continue the Mantle series by inserting reprint cards from the Bowman series, along with some Topps All-Star cards, combo cards, and World Series highlights. There was only one problem. The second series of reprints were numbered 21-36.

Wait, so if the 1996 series ended with 19, and the 1997 began with 21...

Where was Card #20??? What was Card #20???

For those of us who didn't collect Bowman cards (and you'll be surprised that there are those kinds of people out there), we would have never known that card #20 (the 1952 Bowman reprint) was inserted into packs of Bowman at a rate of 1:48 packs. For those who collected Bowman only (and you'll be surprised that there are those kinds of people out there), it was a neat insert card. Because it was only one card, and no other cards to speak of it in packs of Bowman, this one card insert set was a nice supplement to those collectors of 1996 Bowman.

But what about those who were tearing their hair out in 1997 when they couldn't figure out where #20 could be? Remember, this was all happening around the time that the Internet was starting to appear in people's homes. Many would not have known to look for sites like eBay, or Beckett...heck, the word "blog" had not even existed yet. Not to many people would have thought to look in other sets to see if this card existed. So most set collectors would have given up and just considered a complete series 2 set as #21-#36. Even Beckett lists the set as complete at 16 cards.

For those that found out that the elusive #20 was in Bowman, it was only a matter of time before they found their prize at a card show or online. Once acquired, it was just a matter of trying to find a place to put it...with their 1996 Topps sets or their 1997 Topps sets. For me, I decided that 1997 was the Willie Mays year, so even though the second set of Mantle cards were found in 1997 Topps, I added them to my 1996 Topps binder. And that's where the above copy of my 1996 Bowman (the only official Bowman card in my collection) will stay.

There may be people still out there, more than 12 years later, who have long given up on their search for this elusive card. It is my hope that they eventually find what they are looking for and lock up this card for their sets. And throughout all their searching and hair pulling, they could probably be asking themselves...

Topps, what were you thinking??!

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama