Orioles Card "O" the Day

An intersection of two of my passions: baseball cards and the Baltimore Orioles. Updated daily?

Friday, August 19, 2011

Vintage Fridays: Steve Barber, 1961 Topps #125

I see that Things Done To Cards hasn't been updated all summer, but I've got a test case for them. If something looks amiss in that scan above, it's because some enterprising collector chose to preserve his or her Steve Barber card by coating the front of it in Con-Tac paper. Sure, they failed to smooth out a few air pockets in the top left corner, and the very top of the card has had the Con-Tac pulled off, leaving a sticky residue that served as a lint magnet, but overall the surface is in pretty danged good shape. It's like they were decades ahead of their time, creating a DIY glossy finish! Has anyone else found old cards modified in this fashion?

4 comments:

Ryan H said...

Sadly, I have. At first I was ecstatic that I won a batch of various Orioles including a 1972 Topps Brooks Robinson. When I got the lot, you can imagine my disdain when I found out it had glossy shiny Contac coating!

night owl said...

I glued a bunch of '79 and '80 Topps doubles to an old binder and placed contact paper over the whole thing. I thought it was a great artistic feat. Several nice cards were glued in there forever, including Luis Tiant and an Ozzie Smith rookie.

Kevin said...

Ryan - Sorry to hear that! Buyer beware, I guess.

night owl - Oh, the collecting sins of children. I guess I wasn't that creative.

Commishbob said...

Kevin, a '61 Barber, no matter how flawed MORE than makes up for the Glenn Davis thing.


I haven't had a card covered in contact paper. The fairly common scotch tape job is as close as I come.
I did have two younger brothers ho liked to cut cards into the various elements, name block, team logo, player pic, etc and glue them into notebooks. Wouldn't be so bad except I have a folder full of 1967s like that including their butchered Brooks Robinson and a bunch more high numbers.