Dear Babe: I have a 1992-1993 Fleer Shaquille O'Neal Rookie basketball card and it has no number. It says "Slam Dunkon the front. -- Diane Lynn, Riverside, Calif.
O'Neal's 1992-'93 Fleer Slam Dunk (SD) card comes in three flavors. Beckett's annual basketball card price guide lists a regular issue rookie card (No. 298) along with two unnumbered versions. Beckett lists the regular card at $3. One unnumbered card was part of a team sheet that was sponsored by Gooding's, a supermarket chain that was given out at the final game of the 92-93 season, according to the Almanac. Fifteen thousand sheets were produced. The sheets were perforated, so an individual card will have little nubs on a least two sides, depending on where O'Neal's card was placed on the sheet. That version books at $8. The third and most valuable variation is the unnumbered card that was part of the Tony's Pizza 108-card set. There are 72 regular cards and 36 SD cards. Three-card packs were packaged inside the frozen pizzas. The SD cards are rarer because they replaced coupon cards in the packs. Shaq's Tony's Pizza card, which will have straight edges, lists for $15. For the record, Shaq's rookie card (401) books at $6. He did not have a regular card in the pizza set.
Dear Babe: Have you heard anything about the Breygent Babe Ruth card that supposedly has a piece of Ruth's bat and a piece of Yankee stadium brick. It sounds too good to be true. -- John-Anthony Bikowski, Suffield, Conn.
It's true. How good it is depends. I didn't know anything about these until you asked. If you search eBay you will see a lot of them for sale. Check completed auctions. The one you pointed me to seems to be overpriced at $139.99 compared to others that have sold.
Breygent, a Canadian company, produced a "Movie Posters" set in 2009.
Tom Breyer, one of the owners, told me that there are two versions of the relic cards.
They made 300 oversized 3-x-5 cards for the person who secured the relics. There are three hundred large cards with a sliver of bat, 300 with a piece of brick and 300 combo cards with both bat slivers and brick pieces.
In addition, there regular-sized versions of the relic cards that went into packs. Breyer said fewer than 300 of each were made.
It looks like there are brick and bat cards on "posters" for "Price of the Yankees" and "Babe Comes Home."
Based on completed auctions it looks as if a set of all three cards -- bat, brick and combo -- sells for around $65-$75. A card with just a sliver of the bat sold for $35, one with a piece of brick went for $18 and a combo card sold for $45. Those values include S&H.
Dear Babe: I have four baseball books from 1945, 1949, 1950 and 1952. Major League Baseball from 1945 has a drawing of Marty Marion on the cover. The 1950 edition has Joe Page on the cover, while the one from 1952 features Stan Musial on the cover. The 1949 edition is missing the cover. They were published by Whitman and Dell. -- Maryjane Quimby, Nashua, N.H.
In this day and age of Internet sales where everyone's garage or attic is turned into a store, values for books such as yours have plunged in value. Not only has supply drastically increased but also the quality of the publications for sale has improved. There's not much of a market for damaged goods.
"Damaged books are at $10 each," said Phil Regli, owner of P&R Publications in Irvin, Calif. and a long-time magazine dealer.
(Send card questions to Babe Waxpak, PO Box 492397, Redding, CA 96049-2397 or e-mail babewaxpak@charter.net. If possible, include card number, year and brand or a photocopy. Please do not send cards. For Babe Waxpak's blog, see www.scrippsnews.com/waxpak.)
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