Grade This Card: 1962 Post Cereal Roberto Clemente

I'm not a professional grader, just a longtime collector. I have a pretty good idea what constitutes gem mint, and what's considered poor. It's just everything in between that throws me. I've scanned one of my cards here. Help me out by giving it a grade in the embedded poll.

1962 Post Cereal Roberto Clemente #173
There was a time when I was only a handful of cards away from completing this set. Then something happened: I stopped caring. I couldn't bring myself to pay $10 for a couple of Cubs. I passed on an Adcock error. I had doubles of Marty Keough. I sold off most of my near-complete set, but I saved a few of the stars, including this one of Clemente. There's an inherent DIY type of beauty in collecting cereal-box cards. For one thing, the cards had to be cut out from the cereal box. You're probably not going to find cards with incredibly straight edges. I have to stop writing about this set. I'm going to want to start collecting it again!

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Muppets... Prize Inside

Back in the late '80s, Post cereal made a cereal to honor one of my favorite Muppets. The Swedish Chef finally got to bring his cuisine to the American public.



I never saw it in stores, but even if I had we wouldn't have bought it. We never had sugary cereal at my house. Anything that called itself "Cinnamonamony", no matter how hilarious, would be put right back on the shelf. As I got older and was allowed to make adult decisions, like choosing breakfast cereal, I was immediately attracted back to Croonchy Stars. Not for the Muppet on the box, nor the cinnamonamony-sweet crunch, but it was the prize inside I craved:

TBCB Muppets - #14 The Swedish Chef



I guess my box was imported from Canada...

The Dangerous Allure of Jerry Lynch

Is it the scripty names? The low budget headshots? The blue outlines for American Leaguers and red for National?

What is it about this set that makes this grown man swoon?

I'll tell you what. It's cheap. Super cheap, in fact. I may be blowing my cover here, but arm yourself with the right reference guides and you can buy the rare ones for practically nothin' from the rubes on eBay. It's a good-looking set, too. Clean lines, small Post logo, real team insignia and uniforms––none of that crap from the Eighties and Nineties, after Major League Baseball added a (TM) to everything and made it so the third-parties didn't want to pay the licensing fees. And this one's an old set, and a short one, too. Just 200 cards. And did I mention it's cheap?

If you're looking for a fun, ground-floor set to get in on, make it a Post Cereal set from the 1960s. I chose 1962. It's got unexpected rarities (like Jerry Lynch), big names that are relatively easy to find, two versions of the Mantle and Maris cards, a host of errors, and the wonderful phenomenon of the hand-cut card.

Ah yes, the joys of cutting your own cards! I remember a certain Will Clark card I cut off the back of a Drake's Cakes when I was 9 years old. It had more angles and jagged edges than a rectangle is supposed to have...

Unless you had steady surgeon's hands or had a parent do the work, you got a ragged piece of cardboard. But that's the fun of it. Besides, who wanted to wait for a parent? I needed that Will Clark card in my grubby stack of cards now!

And no matter where you find these early-Sixties Post cards, be it in the dime bin at a show or a ten-dollar lot on eBay, they are always a bit ragged. Sure, being born of cereal-box-grade cardboard didn't help (feels a bit flimsier than standard Topps baseball cards of the day), but it's the knowledge that kids in the Sixties were every bit as impatient to get at their cards as I was, twenty-five years later, that puts this set on a higher plane.

So goodnight, you backs of cereal boxes, you hand-cut kings of nostalgia.

Goudey Trade-away #51: Ryan and Patterson for a stack of cards

This trade comes in from Scott in New Jersey.

Giving: Nolan Ryan, #202; Corey Patterson, #115 (red back)
Getting: A stack of fifty cards

That's right. Scott sent me a stack of cards. And begged that he only get one or two in return. Um, okay. I can live with that. These scans are only the tip of the trade iceberg. In particular, check out the Post cereal cards that are completely non-sensical, not simply because the name of this set is 'First Collector Series,' as if either Post forgot that they created cards in the Sixties (with significantly more licensing) or that they considered these cards for newbie collectors. (As a side note, If I was just starting out collecting baseball cards, I probably would choose a set where I could figure out each player's team, not one that might lead me to believe there were only two teams: blue and red...)

The other reason this set is non-sensical is because those baseball fanatics at Post came up with their own position shorthand. First base? FB. Second? SB. Check out this card of Wade Boggs of the Blue Team. Heck of a job, Postie. Way to teach those kids about this here game of baseball.