Car Cards I scored today

[mrtc4w]

I scored these cards at the Dayton, OH Toy Show today. There is no name on the cards, no card count (1 of XX), just T.C.G. in small letters on the back.

One thing I thought was odd, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth is not mentioned at all on the back of the BB card.

I also never heard of the "Bimini Wagon".





Marty

[Zombie Shay]

Very nice I like that lil coffin
PS check your email about the charger ;D
Fliped them 4 ya

[vwcamperman]

That "Bimini Wagon" sure is different! I like it! ;D

[modelcitizen]

Awesome score Marty!

Kool Kards!!!

I've got a heck of a kink in my neck now, though ;D ;D ;D!

Thanks for sharing, I think ;D ;D ;D..........



"Paulie"

[bellyofthewhale]

Holy crap! Look at the beehive hairdo on that chick!!

[metalburner]

way cool!!!!!!!!!!!

[modelcitizen]

Thanks Shay .

Now if you could recommend a good chiropractor ;D ;D ;D.







"Paulie"

[Deleted]

T.C.G. = Topps Chewing Gum and judging from the cars and style of the cards, late 60's?....... Damn it all anyways...... had a swack of those back when Noah was building his custom arc.... Great score... any doubles?

Lance

[A.J.]

I've been working on a set of these for a couple years now. There are 66 in the set and from what I know there are 3 different colors for the back of the cards. It is curious that none of the Roth cars have his name on them but all of the Barris ones do. I'd almost want to think that Barris had something to do with this set of cards but I'm not sure. There isn't a lot of info available on the set of cards. The prices vary from time to time. Occasionally you can get some for around a dollar a card but there are times I've seen them go for as much as 5 dollars a card or more.

[Tim Nolan]

I love these old card sets, but I only have the Silhouette and the Coffin as well. Good pictures on them though. I wish I had ALL the old Odd Rods and card sets I had as a kid! My Dad worked for a spice company, and he would trade stuf tothe guys from Topps, Fleer, and the like, for the whole damned display box of these things! I had tons of doubles to trade! Football cards, Partridge Family, The Monkee's, Baseball...Man, those were good days for me as a kid!

[T C]

There called "spec sheet" There is 66 and one really cool one of the manta ray. That beehive hairdo lady was not not only on the track on sunday but worked in every store back then...dont know how she did it!!! cgi.ebay.com/1965-SPEC-SHEET-Hot-Rod-Magazine-CARD-38-Manta-Ray-Car_W0QQitemZ300192659227QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

[T C]

I stand corrected...those arn't the same as the spec sheet cards...my bad!

[stevehammann]

Pardon the pun. I wrote an article back in the stone age for a now defunct vintage drag history mag called Quarter Milestones. If I can scrounge it up it has all the pertinent poop on this set. Until then, here is the Cliffs Notes version....

Produced in 1964/65 by Topps (the famous baseball card maker). Although there is no official name for the set (even Topps documentation does not refer to it), it is generally referred to as Hot Rods because in big block letters that is what was emblazoned across the wrapper and the store display box they came in.

The complete set contains 66 cards and no stickers. There are three distinct color variations on the back. Orange (also listed as Brown due to a darker card stock it was printed on), Pink, and Yellow.

The Orange/Brown backs are the easiest to find and are generally accepted mix and match to complete a set.

The pink backs ARE harder to find and a complete set is near impossible to assemble even WITH a few bent cards in the deck. The Pink ones were issued towards the end of the run when Topps ran out of orange ink, or so the rumor goes.

The Yellow ones which were not issued in wrappers at all but were instead issued in a board game later in the 60's along with star player Baseball cards and various other subject matter. There are only 22 of these Yellow backs and although they are relatively easy to find, they are hard to find in good condition because they were used to play in the board game instead of being collected.

Now, the hard part. Topps played a little game "unofficially" referred to as "loading the deck". A standard issue of their Non Sport Card set of the time was 33, 44, 66, or ocassionally 132 cards to a set. The standard print sheet held 99 cards. So on the 33 card sets, it was pretty easy to put a set together because they triple printed every card in the set on the same sheet. A 44 card set had double printed cards with a random selection of 11 more of the SAME cards added to fill out the 99 card sheet. See where this is going? Remember running down to the corner grocery to plop down your hard earned nickle only to open the pack and find the SAME FIVE CARDS you just opened up a day or two before?

So on this set, you will find 33 cards easier to find than the other 33 (I don't remember if it was the first or second half) because they printed a full set plus 33 duplicates on the same sheet. They did this because they could fill out printing sheets without wasting any, plus it gave them more product to sell to us dumb little SCH.... kids. The cards are numbered at the top left of the back inside the checkered flag.

[stevehammann]

Added pics of card backs to show variations.

[stevehammann]

The first 33 cards in the set were of cars related to Barris. The last 33 cards were a conglomeration of photos including customs, hot rods, dream cars, & racers produced by a company called Traction Action. That is why there is no mention of Roth on his cards because the photos belonged to Traction Action while I'm sure Barris pocketed a cache of coin for his stuff since his name is mentioned prominently.

Now for the backs. It seems my memory was a little fuzzy on the earlier post. All 66 cards were available printed with Pink ink on Grey card stock giving them an Orange color.

At a later date, all of the Barris cards (33) and 11 of the rest (making 44 total, remember from the above post on the set counts) were printed in Pink ink on White stock giving them a Pink color AND printed in Pink ink on Tan stock giving them a Brown color. The variation card numbers for both of these colors are 36, 38, 40, 41, 43, 50, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63. So the only true "complete" set to collect would be the Orange backs. So in the end, the easiest cards to collect are the first 33 of the Orange back because of the way they were laid out on the print sheet with all 66 cards and then the first 33 again to fill out the 99 card sheet. The Pink and Brown backs seem to be a shorter run on the press.

As for the Yellow backs, they were released in 1968 in a board game called "Pick-A-Card" by Milton Bradley, practically non existent now because there were also several big time baseball and football player highly desirable cards included. There were 22 cards total. #1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33. I have all of the Yellow backs except #10.

On a side note for you vintage Drag Nuts, there are several of the top Rails of the day in the set.

[barten]

These are very cool. .. thanks for posting them

[stevehammann]

Just looking back thru some older posts and thought I'd post a phew collectors tips in caring for these older cards sets. Like most MOOKS (thanks for the terminology Tim) of my ilk, I had quite a bit of this Schtuff as a kid. I have now been re-collecting these types of cards for about 20 years.

First of all, don't drive yourself crazy trying to assemble a complete "mint" set. You will rarely find ANY single true "mint" shape card of this era let alone a whole set because frankly Topps didn't care about shading, centering, etc, they were just cranking out cards to sell the bubble gum.

Speaking of bubble gum, the bottom card in every wax pack was always in contact with the bubble gum, hence it almost always ended up with a stain from the gum resins because the back of the card stock was porous and readily soaked it up. The longer the packs sat on the shelf before being opened, the worse the stain. The only way I know of to make it look better (and you will never totally get rid of the stain) is to lay a high quality paper towel (white with no ink patterns) on a flat surface with the card back on the paper towel and press it with a book for a week or so. If the stain is really bad, change positions of the card on the paper towel a few times. Any form of liquid cleaner will probably take out the gum stain but probably will take some ink with it.

Now, speaking of those wonderful wax wrappers which are collectible themselves for their artwork, they too did some damage to the cards they were supposed to be protecting. If the cards were left inside the sealed wrapper for an extended period or if the whole box was stored in a warm environment for a while, the wax on the wrapper would slowly melt and stick to the top card in the pack leaving a blob of wax. This is much easier to deal with than the gum stains. First of all, the front of the card stock was made of a slick smoother material than the back so the wax does not soak in, it merely lays on top of the card.

The wax can be easily polished off by laying the card on a hard flat surface and borrowing a pair of your wifes (I'd get her permission first) pantyhose. I'd ask her for some that she is about to throw away because this job certainly won't do the pantyhose any good. Firmly hold the card down while you lightly polish the card surface with a doubled over layer of the hose. Just like polishing a car, constantly change to a clean portion of the polishing rag (pantyhose) so as to not drag dirt over the freshly polished area.

As for putting together a set, I have always followed one rule. Buy whatever you can find first to have an example of everything, then go back and try to upgrade the cards you do not feel are in acceptable condition. SOME of these cards REALLY are rare and you may only see them once in your life time. If you run across a deal of LOTS of cards, buy them all as long as you feel it's a fair price. The reasoning behind this is two fold. You can cherry pick what you want for your set, then have some left over to trade or resell to hopefully finance the rest of your set.

The most important thing to remember is this too is JUST A HOBBY. Value is perceived by the buyer and the seller. If World War 3 comes tomorrow, you can't eat them. Well you COULD but I wouldn't recommend it without a little salt and catsup. Set a price you would like to invest (with some reality to it) and stick to it, only slightly wavering if it's something you really want/need to fill out the set and it is truly more rare than Hen's teeth. Use some common sense too. If you got a he!! of a deal on cards you should have paid $2 each for and you got tham all for 50 cents each, don't worry if you have to pay $5 to $10 for that LAST non-existant card to fill the set.

Finally for ease of display, buy high quality archival (PVC Free) trading card sheets that hold nine cards to a sheet. They will hold 18 cards (back to back) if you just want to look at the fronts and don't care about reading the backs. PVC has an acid in it that will eat the cards over time.

[TheMadModeler]

WOW.. I've never seen these before.. Thanks for posting them.
Now I'd like to see all 66..
BiLL..

[ramone]

Those are great, very nice!!!

[mrtc4w]

Steve,
Thanks for the tips on collecting cards.

I do agree with buy what you can afford and upgrade when you can.

Marty