[noahtNZ]

I have a bunch of Topps baseball cards, but listed as "© T.C.G. PRINTED IN CANADA" rather than USA. They were printed before 1972, so this was before our mandatory bilingualism laws took effect, so the cards have no French on them and aside from the listed country are otherwise identical.

Does this one alteration decrease their base value at all, and if so, by how much?

[djohn]

I believe these are actually listed as O-Pee-Chee and not Topps.

[scottbdoug]

yes they are o-pee chee cards and their value depends on the buyer. some treat o-pee chee cards as "those stupid cards from Canada" that get mixed into Topps cards when no one is paying attention and consider them similar to oddball sets with the accordingly low price tag if they would consider buying them. Others see them as scarce collectible cards stating that they are printed in very low numbers compared to their Topps couterparts and therefore might pay a premium for them. It just depends on who you are dealing with i suppose.

[rmpaq5]

Vintage O-Pee-Chee typically books higher than Topps. Evens out about mid 80s.

[scottzoe]

I have a bunch of Topps baseball cards, but listed as "© T.C.G. PRINTED IN CANADA" rather than USA. They were printed before 1972, so this was before our mandatory bilingualism laws took effect, so the cards have no French on them and aside from the listed country are otherwise identical.

Does this one alteration decrease their base value at all, and if so, by how much?

The other posters are correct, those are O-Pee-Chee. The years that are printed English only are from 1965-1969. 1970 is the first year the cards were bilingual. Typically for those years the cards command a premium over their Topps counterparts. Of course condition is the biggest factor relating to price. If you have any Red Sox from those years, I would be interested in trading for them.

Thnaks,
Scott

[noahtNZ]

That's pretty strange, since you'd think that if it was an OPC card, they would have a copyright for their company, not Topps.

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Just to make sure we're on the same page, here's an example of one of the cards I have: Topps (O-Pee-Chee?) 1966 #103 (with trade notice), St. Louis shortstop Dick Groat.

   
   

Aside from the country name it is identical to the other cards. Seeing as how I have several OPC cards of my own that look completely different, I'm having a hard time believing that this isn't Topps. But I'll take your word for it - you're the experts.

[ellis2211]

That's pretty strange, since you'd think that if it was an OPC card, they would have a copyright for their company, not Topps.

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Just to make sure we're on the same page, here's an example of one of the cards I have: Topps (O-Pee-Chee?) 1966 #103 (with trade notice), St. Louis shortstop Dick Groat.




Aside from the country name it is identical to the other cards. Seeing as how I have several OPC cards of my own that look completely different, I'm having a hard time believing that this isn't Topps. But I'll take your word for it - you're the experts.

I believe the missing piece of information that would make this whole thing make more sense to you is that Topps and OPC have had a long standing marketing agreement together. Topps supplied the pictures, the statistics, and biographical information to OPC. There are examples of OPC cards that did not use the same image of Topps, but it wasn't typical. So if you want to refer to them as Topps cards that are marketed, printed, and sold in Canada Through a Canadian Company then that would be accurate.

[djohn]

That's pretty strange, since you'd think that if it was an OPC card, they would have a copyright for their company, not Topps.

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Aside from the country name it is identical to the other cards. Seeing as how I have several OPC cards of my own that look completely different, I'm having a hard time believing that this isn't Topps. But I'll take your word for it - you're the experts.

It is all about the year the cards were made. O-Pee-Chee and Topps had a marketing agreement starting in 1958. In 1965 the cards the O-Pee-Chee baseball cards were printed in Canada, however they looked identical to the Topps versions, including the copyright (as Topps owns that, since it was just a marketing agreement), though they do use a slightly different card stock. The big difference in the sets is that the O-Pee-Chee sets were typically smaller (i.e. only the first 200 cards or so of the Topps set). During the 60's it's estimated that the print runs for O-Pee-Chee were 5% or less of the print run of Topps, thus they should be more valuable (however since the difference is subtle, the value difference is not that drastic).
In 1970 the Canadian government enacted a law that required the inclusion of French and English on the cards, thus the 1971 Topps and O-Pee-Chee cards are more easily distinguishable (they also differ in that the 1971 O-Pee-Chee cards had yellow backs and 14 of the cards used different photos.
In 1972 the Topps or T.C.G. copyright was finally changed to O-Pee-Chee or O.P.C., in addition from that year on any time the name Topps appeared on a card it was replaced by O-Pee-Chee.
In 1977 about 1/3 of the O-Pee-Chee set used difference pictures (sometimes subtle things like different cropping of a photo or airbrush work) than the Topps set.

[rmpaq5]

Also since the OpeeChee cards were produced later than Topps Cards, many trades etc.. are indicated on the card front with a stamped "Now with...whatever the new team was, and the team ID on the front indicated the new team in most instances, even with the player pictured in the old team uni.

[crossada]

In my experience the more modern rc cards command a lot more than the Topps counterpart such as Frank Thomas or Chipper Jones.