Jumping Into '62

With the completion of 1964 Topps, my next set build is 1962 Topps.  Both sets (and some '63's) started with the same bargain lot I got at a shop in western Maryland a few years ago.  I got over 300 cards for a net price of about 7¢ each that day.  No big stars, but a nice starter lot for all three sets. 

Earlier, I mentioned my official start in on the classic wood bordered cards.  I sure ended up with a lot of them by the end of my vacation.  

After that, the bulk of these were obtained at the National.  As before, these are grouped by vendor, but not in great detail in most cases.

Curious that the bright red price tags scan just off white.  Anyway, these are typical of my starter lot.  Not pristine, but not too bad.  The Win Leaders is a little more crooked than I like, but for $2 instead of two or three times that...sure.

Some good names here.  The first checklist is the error flavor, with numbers starting at 121 on the back instead of 34.  Santo is a little rounded, but $8 isn't bad in Chicago.  Sometimes I buy certain ones a little too fast.  I think the Musial and World Series are good discounts.

Even better discounts on these.  They're from the "Half Price Wooden Box" I mentioned in the previous vintage post.  $3 Team cards and World Series?  All day....

Also from there, a Billy Martin for seven and a half.  Again, fits right in with my set.

And inevitably, between those two batches, I ended up with two of the same checklist.  This time the 3rd Series variety, which has some variants too.

Both of these are the "with comma" version, denoting itself at card 192.  There is another version without the comma.  But there's more...

On yet another copy I got elsewhere, the black shadow appears to overlap the white panel (error on left), and behind it properly (on right). 

Moving on, some more stars at nice prices.  All of which are about half of what you'll typically find these in this condition on sale for.

A few heavy hitters from my pal Marv.  He just sent me a huge lot of '62's from his stock that I hadn't found, including some massive stars.  You'll have to wait for those.  They'll be the nicest ones yet.  I do like that Mathews a lot, though.

Big Bad Bambino.  From the big holder with the marker price, it feels like this one was on the 80% off table I hit at the National, but I might be wrong.  Could have just been half price.  There are several on COMC right now at about $10-15 in slightly worse condition.

For the flourish at the end - these are all from the same dealer on the last day we were at the National.  All of them were a dollar a shot.  Mostly commons, but a lot of rookies.  I pulled out some of the more well known names.  Not bad for team cards and minor All-Stars, eh?  I got both the regular and green tint samples of Mr. Drake up in the corner.  I won't be persuing all the green tints, they're too hard to distinguish most of the time.

All these got me down to 276 cards needed out of 598.  Marv is about to cut that down another 30-40%.  Stay tuned!