Jim Hegan and Harry Simpson Purchases

I also picked up two more tough ones recently; #80 Jim Hegan and #150 Harry Simpson.  Simpson died in 1979, and Hegan in 1984, so they both are pretty difficult to find.

Chalk this up to 'a sign of the times' but I'm noticing that the biographies on the card backs omit references to the Negro Leagues.  Case in point, Simpson's bio says that his first year in organized baseball was 1949, when that was actually his first year in the integrated minor leagues; he had gotten started professionally with the 1946 Philadelphia Stars, and played with them through 1948.

Bubba Church Purchase

After much searching, I finally found a bold signature of #47 Bubba Church.  For some reason, the Church's that I've seen all were either faint or badly blurred.  From the scans it looked like it was signed in fountain pen, but it's actually signed in Sharpie.  A bit of a disappointment, but for the price I got I'm not complaining.

Al Zarilla, Ed McGhee and Harry Perkowski

A purchase from Mickey's also arrived today: #181 Al Zarilla, #195 Ed McGhee and #236 Harry Perkowski.  I've noticed that I've been able to pick up a  lot of the tougher signatures cheaply due to them being personalized, recently with McGhee and McDermott, and a few months ago with Bob Hooper.

I have a couple more eBay purchases that should arrive over the next few days.  I'll do an update then and see if I've reached my goal of 125 signed 1953 Topps.

Karl Drews

I picked up one of the toughest cards in the set in an auction a few days back: #59 Karl Drews.  He's tough because he was hit and killed by a drunk driver in 1963, 10 years after the set came out.  For some reason, all the Phillies in the set are hard to find; I have yet to see a Howie Fox, and I've only seen one each of Johnny Wyrostek, Willie Jones, Drews, Ken Heintzelman and Granville Hamner.

Several Auction Wins

Over the past few months there has been a collection of signed 1953 Topps that is being broken up and sold on eBay.  I picked up a few of them in the spring, and added a half dozen more earlier this week.  Five of them arrived today; #55 Mickey McDermott, #221 Bob Milliken, #240 Freddie Marsh, #241 Al Sima, and #256 Les Peden.  For some reason none of those five come up for sale very often. I only know of one McDermott and Milliken for sale, and had never seen any of the other three outside of personal collections.

Some of the signatures look pretty faint in the scans, but they are much bolder in person.  I'm now up to 118/274 (43.07%).  My goal was to get to 125 by the end of the year, which is looking very doable. If I'm lucky I may even get to 137, which is the halfway point.