Rare Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Ty Cobb Baseball Cards to Auction
Red portrait Ty Cobb baseball card
Heritage Auctions’ July 12-13 Summer Sports Card Catalog Auction will feature a mint-condition 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson, a gem-mint Michael Jordan Fleer rookie card, and a gem-mint chrome rookie card signed by a young Bryce Harper.
Highlights include the rare 1959 baseball cards that once came stapled to containers full of Canadian cookies including Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Eddie Mathews, Whitey Ford, Ernie Banks and Yogi Berra.
“These cards excite even the most veteran collector because they’re something most hobbyists haven’t seen in years or, more likely, ever,” said Joe Orlando, Heritage’s Executive Vice President in Sports. “These Dad’s Cookies cards are why people hunt for these things, to find that lost gem, the forgotten treasure.”
The Dad’s Cookies cards were printed by a company well known by collectors, Exhibits Supply Company, which was founded in 1907 in Chicago by J. Frank Meyer, a printer who created picture postcards distributed in arcades. The cards sold for a penny. Exhibits eventually licensed its products to other companies and countries. In 1959, that included Dad’s Cookies which started in Los Angeles, opened a Vancouver outpost in 1930, and was eventually taken ove by Nabisco in 1986. The cards were promotional items stapled to bags and boxes of cookies, each one bearing a note from 'Sandy' the company’s Scottish mascot persuading children to collect all 64 “autographed” pictures of “a BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL STAR.” There was also a giveaway for “FREE COLOURED ALBUM” into which they could be stuck.
Other highlights include two sought-after Portrait-Red Ty Cobb T206s from the early 1900s, one of which is the El Principe de Gales Ty Cobb which has not been available at auction in nearly a decade, and several sealed boxes and cases including the 1970 Topps Baseball Wax Box (1st & 3rd Series) containing 24 unopened packs that could hold Carl Yastrzemski, Vida Blue’s rookie card, Rod Carew, Tom Seaver or Roberto Clemente.
