Hall of Fame? Rookie Card - Maury Wills

I don't buy graded cards very often. It's just not my thing. Seems like most of the baseball card blogging community is the same way. But if you've been around the hobby for any length of time, you've probably heard the phrase, "buy the card, not the grade". I've modified that a bit to "love the card, not the condition". 

I love cards and to me the condition, especially on vintage cards, isn't that important. A few weeks ago I started writing a post about Fleer cards, based on a binder of Fleer cards that I started. The problem was that my binder started with some 1981 Fleer cards, but we all know that Fleer produced baseball cards prior to 1981. Apparently they produced baseball cards as early as 1923, but I have not been able to even locate any images of these cards.

In 1959 Fleer produced the Ted Williams set and then in 1960 and 1961 it manufactured a Baseball Greats set. In 1963 Fleer took a leap and produced cards of active ball players. There were supposed to be multiple series, but Topps quashed the project after just one 67 card series. It would be another 18 years before Fleer would be able to produce a set featuring active players.

I have a few cards from the 1959 Ted Williams set as well as the 1961 Baseball Greats set, but I realized that I didn't have a single 1963 Fleer card in my collection. I was familiar with the set enough to know that  Maury Wills rookie card is in the set, so as I perused eBay, I "watched" a few of them. For about $45 shipped you can get a off centered, but sharp good looking card. I went a different route and got an off centered, creased copy with rounded corners and writing on the back for $1.07 shipped. 

I love it! Wills is another guy that fits my Hall of Fame? Rookie Card collection. Maury Wills played for the Dodgers from 1959-66, the Pirates in 1967 and 1968, the Expos for the first part of 1969 and came back to the Dodgers to finish off the 1969 season and played with them through the 1972 season. His best years were during his first stint with the Dodgers. He was played in 7 All-Star games over 5 seasons and was part of three World Series Championship Dodgers teams. He was the 1962 N.L. MVP and won Gold Gloves in 1961 and 1962 at shortstop. His career .281 batting average and 2,134 hits over 14 seasons are decent, but Wills dominated the base paths, leading the National Leauge in stolen bases for 6 consecutive seasons from 1960-65 and set a then record in 1962 with 104 thefts although his record would initially come with an asterisk since the previous record, set by Ty Cobb, was done in 154 games as opposed to 162. 

I'm sure you're asking yourself, how did he get a Maury Wills rookie card, in any condition, for $1.07? Well, I got it as part of a 10 card lot that I won for $10.75 shipped, so each card is roughly $1.07. This works great for me because I wanted 9 cards for my binder. The problem is there were a couple of dups, so if you have any 1963 Fleer cards that you want to trade me for my extra Tom Cheny or Dave Stenhouse, let me know.

The cards aren't in the greatest condition, but the Wills card is by far in the roughest shape. I also love that the lot included both the Wills and Jimmy Piersall, who were the player reps for Fleer for this set.