Perez-Steele Hall of Fame Postcard Artwork

For over 20 years, from 1980 through 2001, Dick Perez

released 15 different series of postcards, updating the collection approximately every 2 years with the new additions to Cooperstown. 

The Perez-Steele Hall of Fame Art Postcards were highly coveted by collectors, and although "limited" to a print run of 10,000 each, signed versions have a very robust secondary market.  Due to the cheap nature of the postcards themselves (typically $0.50-$0.75), and how attractive they looked when signed, the postcards made great additions to any Hall of Fame or baseball collections.  (More information about the history of Perez-Steele can be found on Perez's website.)

  

Unfortunately, the official agreement between the Hall of Fame and Perez-Steele ended in 2001, so when Rickey Henderson was inducted in 2009, he was too late to be included.  But, although a postcard wasn't created, I just recently found out that Dick Perez has still been painting all of the Hall of Famers inducted for the past 10 years.

The artwork above is currently being auctioned off by

Robert Edward Auctions, along with a large collection of other original Dick Perez art.  The Rickey is currently at $500 with about 4 days to go, but I expect it to go much higher once all is said and done.

My first exposure to Dick Perez was with the 1988 Donruss Diamond Kings set, the year after I started collecting.  Although Perez produced the Diamond Kings set from 1982-1996, during the prime of Rickey's career, he only appeared in one set, in 1983.  Amazingly, he had as many appearances as Glenn Hubbard and Mike Bielecki, and actually appeared less than Johnny Ray, who was in both the 1986 and 1989 releases.  You can see images of all Dick Perez's Diamond Kings artwork here.

March/April Additions, and Twitter!

The theme for the past two months has been quality over quantity.  While I haven't added a lot of new cards to the collection, what I did add were ones I never thought I'd be able to track down.  I recently posted about my first certified auto, and I also picked up a few older promo and sample cards, which I have yet to post to the blog, but hope to shortly.

The past few months have been pretty hectic, as I've been going to grad school for the past 4 years, and finally had my last MBA class on Monday.  But, now that school is complete, I should finally have a bit more free time to spend with the blog.  I also got a little crazy, and decided to open up a Rickey Henderson Collectibles Twitter

account as well.  I've already been able to track down a couple of interesting interviews and factoids that I may have otherwise missed.  If you're up for your daily dose of Rickey (or as often as I find something interesting), come check out @manofsteal_ (and don't forget the silly underscore at the end).

And now, what you've probably all been patiently waiting for, on to the cards.

 2004 Throwback Threads Generations Material w/Jackson & Chavez #21 #/50


2012 Topps Golden Moments Die Cuts #GMDC20


2010 Topps Triple Threads Sapphire #93 #/25


2005 Diamond Kings Timeline Materials Bat  A's-Dgr #14 #/100


2005 Timeless Treasures Game Day Materials Bat #8 #/100     


2005 Timeless Treasures Statistical Champions Materials Year Jsy #35 #/100     

My First Certified Auto - 2011 Topps Tier One

Although I like to consider my collection fairly complete, the one area that I knew it was lacking was the certified autograph department, as I had exactly zero Rickey's to my name.  It's not that Rickey Henderson has a shortage of certified autographs to choose from, they are just typically fairly expensive, and I'd much rather add a lot of lower end cards for the price of one auto.

But, I did want to add one eventually, and now that I'd personally made a point of not having one, when I finally picked one up, it had to be the right one.  It needed to have a nice design, feature an interesting picture of Rickey on the A's, and be an on-card auto, as opposed to the sticker autos, which don't usually look all that great.  When 2011 Topps Tier One was released last year, I knew that I'd finally found my certified first auto.

The card meets all of my criteria, featuring an original picture of Rickey on the A's (Topps tends to reuse the same image a bit too often), a clean design, and a bold on-card autograph.

This is the base version of the Topps Tier One Top Tier Autographs set, which is #/99.  These have become very popular with set collectors, and the prices have gone up rather significantly from when they were first released.


Although I don't own one, there's also a gold parallel (the smoky/cloudy area behind the picture is gold instead of blue), which is numbered to only 10 copies.

I'm glad the card was able to find a nice home in my collection, but it might be a little lonely, as I'm not sure how many more autos I'll be picking up in the near future.  But, if they keep releasing cards that look like this, it might be sooner rather than later!