IT WAS A 1960 TOPPS TEX CLEVENGER. That was “the card.” The oldest card in the neighborhood, when I was a kid, and a Holy Grail for whichever one of us didn’t have it. We had plenty of cards – 1977 and 1978 Topps baseball, a few hundred 1976, some 1975s. A classmate of mine had an older brother that had a lot of 1973s, so we got a bunch of those through trades, and one of us had a cousin that had – gasp – 1969 Topps, including a Hank Aaron! But nothing was better than the 1960 Topps Tex Clevenger.
Munson, a Schmidt, a Carew, a Reggie. I liked weird cards – the ones on the Wiffle Ball boxes, inside Kellogg’s cereal, at Burger King, advertised in the pages of Baseball Digest. And every year for Christmas we’d all ask for the Beckett “Price Guide” – not so much to learn what our cards were worth, but to go through the pages and learn about all the exotic sets. East Hills Pirates . Drake’s Cakes . Red Man Tobacco . Names of long- ago sets that were impossible to find, cards we only hoped someday to see in person. They were myths. Eventually, we grew up, and got married. Nick had two beautiful daughters, moved to the Carolinas, works in the medical business. John became a sportswriter, a statistician, and even had a few years as an executive with an NBA team.
There were three of us who collected cards on our block: myself, Nick, and John. We traded constantly. And whenever one of us managed to latch onto a really special new card, whoever owned the Clevenger would have to decide whether or not to use it as trade bait.
Me? I’m still chasing after baseball cards. Weird ones. And I get to research them and write about them for a living, in the pages of this catalog. Even though I see those cards every day now,I still treat them with the same reverence I did as a boy. No job could be better. I hope it’s the last job I ever have. To me, nothing could be more fun than putting together an auction catalog filled with Old Judges, S.F. Hess, Toleteros, PCL cards, and obscure memorabilia – the kind of stuff you don’t see every day. And I’m proud to own an auction company that is rapidly becoming known as the best place to find that stuff. I think Nick wound up with the Clevenger (although a few years ago, I bought a nice PSA 8 for myself). But I discovered something even cooler, in an old cigar box with some of my childhood cards in it. A 1977 Topps Bruce Sutter rookie card. On the back, in thick, green marker, is written “Batting Coach.” It’s one of my favorite cards. Enjoy the catalog. Al Crisafulli Auction Director
I traded it for that 1969 Aaron once. I got it from Nick, who eventually traded it to John for a Jim Rice rookie. Nick was a Red Sox fan. John was a Milwaukee Brewers fan, and I’m pretty sure he traded it for a Yount rookie at some point. John was a frustrating collector, though. He used to play with his cards, using them for imaginary teams he would create, and he would assign make-believe positions for some of the players. To keep track, he would write their new position on the back of the card, with a green marker. “Stop writing on your cards!” we would implore him. But he just kept doing it. Sometimes we would hold back from trading him a card unless he promised he wouldn’t write on it. We traded so often that sometimes we’d get a card back, over and over again, and when Nick or I got one back that had writing on it, we’d go crazy. “I don’t want this card anymore,” we’d yell. “Why would you write ‘outfield’ on the back of a Johnny Bench card? You ruined it, and he doesn’t even play outfield.” We looked high and low for cards that the other guys didn’t know about. On trips to the grocery store, each of us would run to the baked goods aisle and rummage through the Hostess products, looking on the back of every box for a
FALL 2025 PREMIER AUCTION − CLOSES NOVEMBER 29, 2025 1
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