I’m shocked this Johnny Stephenson card of mine hasn’t gotten the COTW treatment before now.
This card is a hand-me-down, either from one of my older brothers or from one of their friends. It’s beat up pretty bad, with bowing of the card, soft corners, a bit of paper missing by the catcher’s mitt and multiple creases. And, of course, there is the brown stain visible in a carefully chosen spot.
No idea what my brother (or his friend) had against poor Mr. Stephenson that made them take a punk and stain the card to make it look like Stephenson stained his pants.
Does anyone reading remember punks? No, not delinquent kids. Punks were a hand-held item, somewhat shaped like a corn dog, if the corn dog part was shrunken down so that it was just slightly bigger than the stick itself. You’d light the tip on fire, like a cigarette, and it gave off a little smell. But really it was used by the kids in my neighborhood to apply heat to things. I recall touching ants with them. Obviously, someone did it to this baseball card to have a laugh. Probably better to do it to a non-living thing – less sadist and all, ya know.
In some ways, it’s odd to me that I’ve never upgraded this card for my 1966 set. Card #1 in the 1966 set is Willie Mays. The first card in old sets is always tougher to find in nice condition because that’s the one that took the brunt of things, especially if you kept your cards together with a rubber band.
My ’66 Mays is in very nice shape, probably EX-MT, if that means anything to you. I got the entire last series of the set from a dealer sometime back in the late 70s and those cards are probably NM. So, why on earth have this beat-to-hell Stephenson card in there when the others are so nice?
It’s probably for a couple of reasons. No doubt the sophomoric part of me enjoys the joke. But it’s also a reminder that these cards were meant to be handled, used and enjoyed.
Cards are a strange thing. It’s amazing that they have any popularity today at all. It’s a 19th Century idea, one that somehow has hung around for an incredibly long time. I only put cards in my bicycle spokes a few times. But I did quite a bit of flipping and matching games with them, essentially gambling with them in the hopes of acquiring more. I kept them loose in a giant box for years before finally organizing them better and keeping them in better shape. This Stephenson is a reminder of those days, apparently for me.
Cards have been in the front of my mind for most of 2021. After not collecting for about two decades, I got back in the hobby this year, acquiring a bunch of cards from 1952-1991. These new additions to the collection are cards in good shape – mid-grade or better. But there’s been no thought whatsoever to upgrading this one. And that feels right, somehow.
What doesn’t feel right is the news recently that MLB has decided to end its 70-something year partnership with Topps. When the current contract is over, that’s it. A new company will be taking over the production of cards. It’s weird to think about and it’s certainly not welcome news for the long-time collectors.
But I’m sure there were people in the 50s who didn’t care for the upstart Topps company and who preferred their Bowman cards, instead. But you survive and adapt and at some point, all the ones who have allegiance to Topps will disappear. May the new company survive as long as Topps and the hobby continue to thrive in one shape or another.
I belong to a couple of different card groups and they both have the word “vintage” in their names. Of course, there’s debate about what the word vintage means. One group has a firm deadline of 1993, meaning no cards produced after that season are allowed. It seems that something has to be at least 100 years old to be considered an antique. But vintage can be whatever you want it to be, so long as you define it.
In baseball, eras can be broken down by specific time frames. The year 1947 is a big one, when integration hit the game. Another one is 1961, when expansion came. Or 1969, when divisional play started.
If we applied that to card collecting, 1981 would certainly be a watershed year, when Donruss and Fleer produced the first national card sets of active major leaguers since 1963 by a company other than Topps. Or 1973, the last set to be released in series for several decades.
Maybe I’m drawing my own personal line in the sand with this 1966 Stephenson.
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Good value how all these kinds of things represent so much, and so varied, emotion. Once my mom pitched my card set after we moved one time or I left home, it was lost for me permanently. I was 11 when my all time favorite set came out, 1974 Topps. At that time my Mets had already been to 2 World Series! Strange way things all connect.
Thanks for sharing.
I’ll share a little add on and a link. Back in the 70s I also started collecting autographs with a buddy of mine, another baseball fanatic and Dodgers fan, despite us living upstate at the time. For obvious reasons, autographs were viewed as more valuable compared to our cards and so needed a proper and safe way to protect them. That ultimately led us to a place called Den’s Collectors Den, in MD. Somehow we learned that their plastic sheets seemed to be “the best” for safely storing our autographs, and special cards (unfortunately I somehow lost my mint 1969 Topps deckle-edged Clemente, now worth a handsome amount). So I bought quite a few of the sheets. It also turns out that DCD issued the ranking system for baseball cards and a catalog of all baseball cards. They also produced a thing called the “Baseball Address List” the home addresses of active and retired baseball players, presumably gotten from public records as the book was huge. That list became a way for a kid to reach out to my heroes that I never saw play personally. I would – on the chance the address was right – send a letter an index card or photo and a SASE for return with the hope I would get an autograph sent back. A lot of folks did, including Satchel Paige and Bob Feller who return signed HoF cards. After moving to souther California, I found out that Gary Carter lived a couple blocks away from me as did Freddy Lynn in a basic middle class neighborhood. Carter invited me in one day after knocking on his door! Lynn never was seen! 40 plus years later my autographs are perfectly preserved in the DCD plastic sheets, still as clear and perfect as the day I bought them as a kid.
https://lostlaurel.com/tag/dens-collectors-den/
I have two distinct memories of Johnny.
He was the final out, struck out looking (check swing), in Jim Bunning’s perfecto on Father’s Day, June 14, 1964.
The other memory is far better. Mets were going against Sandy Koufax, who had never lost to them up to that point. Late in the game, scored tied, and Joe Christopher (who wound up hitting .303 that year, along with Ron Hunt who hit .301) reaches first with two out. Johnny then hit a ball up the gap in right center, and I commenced to scream for Christopher to score…”c’mon Joe, c’mon Joe…” because I knew this was the Mets only chance to beat Sandy K.
Christopher beat the throw home and the Mets won the game and handed Sandy probably his only loss against the feeble Metsies. Johnny’s storied career was thereby validated.