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Baseball Card Trivia
1. Last week, a baseball card sold for $6,606,000, making it the most expensive baseball card ever.
Who is the player depicted in the card? a. Honus Wagner b. Mickey Mantle c. Babe Ruth d. Joe Jackson
2. In 2003, baseball card company
Donruss purchased a jersey that
Babe Ruth wore in 1925. What did they do with it? a. Ra ed it o to purchasers of their cards b. Had players from various teams pose in the jersey c. Cut it into 2,100 pieces and put the pieces in random packs of cards d. Gave it to a wellknown baseball card collector who was willing to burn his 10,000 card Topps collection
3. Paul Jones, age 35, is the Guinness
World Record holder for having the largest private baseball card collection in the world.
Approximately how many cards does he currently have? a. 40,000 b. 200,000 c. 2.8 million d. 4 million
4. In the late 1800s, what was the primary method in which baseball cards were distributed? a. They were printed on the back of game tickets b. They were distributed in
breakfast cereal boxes c. They were distributed in distributed in cigarette boxes cigarette boxes d. They were d. mailed to home mailed to home for free, with the for free, with the hope of getting hope of getting people to become people to become baseball fans baseball fans
5. Baseball cards are professionally graded for condition using what scale? a. A to F b. 1 to 10 c. 1 to 100 d. Mint-Good-Fair-Poor
6. What is the most that a Joe
DiMaggio card was ever sold for? a. $32,000 b. $288,000 c. $1.2 million d. $2.4 million
Answers 1. A 2. C 3. C 4. C 5. B 6. B Scorecard 5-6 correct: You are a GEM-MT10! 3-4 correct: Not bad, you are like a 1980s Don Mattingly card – sounds good, but doesn’t really have so much value. 0-2 correct: You are as good as a hard piece of bazooka gum, stuck in a deck of cards since 1912.
Topps Trivia
After 70 years, Major League Baseball is ending its seven-decade relationship with trading card company Topps, after signing a new partnership with a rival company
$In 1938, Brooklyn-based entrepreneur Morris Shorin’s four sons – Abram, Ira, Joseph and Philip – revived the family’s struggling tobacco-distribution business by creating Topps Chewing Gum, Inc.
$In 1951, Topps released its fi rst series of baseball cards, after its employee Sy Berger came up with the idea and designed the fi rst such cards at his kitchen table in Rockville Centre.
$Although there were other baseball card companies when Topps started making baseball cards, Sy Berger came up with the ingenious idea of including player statistics on the back of the cards.
$In 1964, Berger negotiated the rights for Topps to produce Beatles trading cards. According to legend, he succeeded by speaking in Yiddish to Brian Epdish to Brian Epstein, the Beatles stein, the Beatles manager. manager.
$The 1985 Topps Gary Pettis rookie card Pettis rookie card actually picactually pictures his younger brother Lynn. $ Hank Aaron is shown batting left-handed on his 1957 Topps card even though he was exclusively a right-handed hitter. The uncorrected error is the result of a fl ipped photo negative.
$Topps’ original baseball card gum was hard for a reason — so it wouldn’t break or buckle when machines pushed it into packs of cards.
$Topps has ventured into other areas of cards outside of baseball. After 9/11, they put out an “Enduring Freedom” set of cards which featured many of the heroes connected with the tragedy. Interestingly, the set also included an Osama bin Laden card, which Topps CEO Arthur Shorin said are meant to be stepped on or ripped apart.
$The leftover 1952 cards were dumped into the Atlantic Ocean o of the Jersey shore. The cards included Mickey Mantle’s fi rst Topps card, which is valued at more than $1 million.
$Topps is currently valued at $1.3 billion and is in the process of going public.
$In 1991, Topps took the gum out of its baseball card packs out of its baseball card packs because serious collectors combecause serious collectors complained the gum stained the cards plained the gum stained the cards and made them worthless.
You Gotta Be Kidding Me!
A baseball scout found a remarkable prospect – a horse who was a pretty good fi elder and who hit the ball every time he was up at bat. The scout got him a tryout with a big league team. Up at bat, the horse slammed the ball into deep left fi eld and stood at the plate, watching it go.
“Run!” the manager screamed. “Run!”
