The Mystery of the 1967 Topps Brooks Robinson 

Interesting. Never realized the 67 brooks was a little tougher to find. Thanks for the dive.

I got lucky two weeks ago at card shop and bought this Brooks 1967 card. They did not know it was a high # and short printed. It was in good/very good condition for $10.00 dollars! I have been collecting since 1980 and I have owned only two of this card. Awesome card of a great player. Loved your video. Thanks!

Last week my wonderful wife gave me a ‘67 Brooks card for my birthday! When asked about his ‘58 card, Brooks said it looked like he was just about to throw up!

I believe there were two versions of the '67 Topps sheets. One on which there was no Brooks card and the other only had it as a single print. Gelman definitely would have had access to cards from the Topps plant as he was an employee as the Art Director. He may have requested a quantity of the Brooks card directed to him. At this point, the Orioles were the prevailing World Champs and it could have been for a potential promotional event. Also, the '64 Curt Flood card has been accumulated by one collector for years and he has thousands of them at this point. A definite obsession.

There might be something to this story as the Brooks Robinson card is one of four cards I need to complete my collection. The Seaver rookie, Carew rookie, and Mike Shannon cards are the other three.

Great upload dude. Good Job

Sorry, but I gotta go with Mike Schmidt being the best 3B of all time. 66 and 67 were tough years for some reason trying to find certain players in those high number short printed series.

Great video. Ebay has changed things in that we can now find these cards. This is still a tough find though….

Great memories of Brooks Robinson. R.I.P. "The Human Vacuum".

Hello Ryan Great Show very entertaining! Did anybody mention your Nagle ? You couldn't go anywhere in the early 80's without seeing his work. I just did a Show telling about my dad getting Willie Mays autograph. What I did not say in the video was how my dads favorite player was Brooks Robinson, so that story about Brooks shaking Cam's hand makes me feel good to know my dad's hero was a cool person. Peace

Awesome.

Long live the Human Vacuum Cleaner! Also, though it sounds like no one fielded better than Brooks, Mike Schmidt might wanna have a convo with you about the best 3rd baseman ;) George Brett may wanna chime in too :)

11:15 if time is short. Of course it's a short print, but that alone doesn't explain the prices. It seems like a very long time for anyone to hoard a big pile of this card.

Awesome Robinson showcase and story. I agree, the photo on his ‘58 is awful. Surely they could have found a better picture to use. I wasn’t even aware of the story of the ‘67 Brooks Robinson. Very interesting. I do not believe that someone hoarded stacks of the card. It is certainly possible, but why the ‘67 out of all his cards? I think it was more likely possibly an oversight by Topps in their sheets. Maybe it was printed on some early sheets, but was not included on later printed sheets, by accident.

This may be one of those mysteries that is never solved. I have uncovered a little more info. Here's what we know for sure, Woody Gelman worked for Topps until the time of his death in 1978. Sam Rosen who was a big dealer in the 50's was Woody Gelman's Father in Law and Woody encouraged Sam Rosen to sell cards to supplement his retirement. It seems logical that his stock of cards for sale came from his connection that Woody Gelman had by working at Topps. Most likely there was a deal struck between Topps and Sam Rosen where Rosen would purchase old stock or overstock that didn't sell. Sam Rosen suddenly died in 1958 and at that point Woody Gelman took over the card business and named in Card Collectors Club. Woody's son Richard worked for his Dad in the business and took over the business when Woody died in 1978. There was a warehouse fire in December of 1975 causing them to lose large amounts of inventory and the rest having smoke and water damage. Now here is what is interesting. There are old ads in the April and May 1977 The Trader Speaks where a man named Don Leopore was selling vending boxes and cases of Topps cards from 1962, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969,1970,1971 and 1972. The 60's cards were gone in just a couple of months and the rest sold through future TTS ads in 1977. Now here is what I just found out, Don Leopore who was selling the vending cases in TTS in 1977 actually worked for Card Collector's Company running the day to day operations. I have also heard though I haven't been able to confirm it but some have said that Larry Fritsch eventually bought the CCC stock from Richard gelman at some point.

I'm a card collector, and also a big Brooks Robinson fan. Yes, that card is highly elusive, very difficult to find. I have a lot of Brooksie cards, but not that 1967 topps Brooksie. I might point out to you that there are a few other mysterious highly elusive cards. A good example is the 1966 topps Horace Clarke card. The guy was a scrub, but his card is worth hundreds. Yes, Brooks Robinson is the greatest third baseman I've ever seen, and he was not a light hitter.

I’ve heard something similar about the rareness of the ‘61 Topps Hal Smith. The theory I’ve heard is that some guy from the Midwest buys up all the ones he finds :)

Its a short print its also in the last series. Card were released in series back then at the last release for the summer almost always created cards hard to find

Mike Schmidt...THE best 3rd Basemen ever.

Haha I literally just had a holy sh$t moment because I remember seeing a brooks Robinson card in my father in laws mid-late 1960s collection. I just looked…it’s the 1968 not 1967