I need an O-Pee-Chee Education

[cjb]

So A couple of years ago I was going through my early 1990's baseball card collection. I know that most baseball cards from this era are mass produced junk so I pulled the good cards out and threw away most of the common no names.

Yesterday I looked at the good player stack that i kept and noticed on the back of some of my cards it said '"O-PEE-CHEE printed in Canada" . The card also has French on the back too.

Apparently it seems that i was collecting both topps and opc baseball and didn't even know it because the topps logo still appears on both the front and back of the card.

My question to you guys is, how much more valuable is 90's OPC baseball compared to topps 90's baseball? Looking back, am I a dumbass for throwing all my OPC commons (not knowing they were OPC of course)?

What's triggering these questions about OPC is that yesterday on ebay, i noticed that a chipper jones topps rookie card sells from about 2 bucks where as the average price of a chipper jones OPC card goes for 10 times the amount at about 20 dollars

Is OPC baseball worth 10x as much as topps or does this just apply to the chipper jones rookie and perhaps other good cards from those sets

I also noticed that some of my old Fleer cards say 'printed in canada' as well. Can someone tell me what's up with that?

thanks

[pwaldo]

OPC was just the Topps sets in Canada. They have the same design for 99% of them and they are always more difficult to find than the Topps counterparts. But not everyone cares about OPC so don't confuse being rarer with more demand. The rookie cards of key guys have heated up a lot recently because it is much much much more difficult for somebody in the US to find a OPC version of a card (Chipper Jones like your example) at a shop or show versus the Topps version that is flooded all over the US. So some are worth a lot more while others get lukewarm interest.

As for the Fleer. I know there is a 1990 Fleer Canadian set that was made in Canada and is only distinguishable by the printed in Canada on the back. Those are really hard to find versus the 1990 Fleer set but most in the United States don't really care for the parallel/set so those don't really carry that much of a premium yet.

[cjb]

Yea!.....I'm gonna be Rich!!!!

thanks