Author: ruitts

My apologies for the cheesy headline.

I couldn’t resist.

In case you’ve never heard of the Bell Brand Dodgers baseball cards, they were small regional issues that were inserted into bags of Bell Brand potato chips and corn chips in 1958, 1960, 1961 and 1962. They’re yet another great oddball set for collectors of Sandy Koufax baseball cards to hunt down.

Along with the Morrell Meats issues, these are some of my favorites as a Koufax collector.

And speaking of the Morrell Meats cards, if you read my previous article about those issues, you’ll remember how I had been trying to find a copy of the 1959 Morrell Meats card for about five or six years with no luck. Well, within about three weeks of writing that article, one popped up on eBay and I instantly snagged it. Go figure! Maybe that article appeased the collecting gods or something, who knows?

Anyways, back to the Bell Brand cards.

Why Bell Brand skipped out on making a 1959 set, I don’t know. It’s been noted that the 1958 cards weren’t very popular and were pulled from production. So, it’s likely that they didn’t think it was worth producing a 1959 set. How I wish they would have made a 1959 issue–guess I’ll just have to daydream about what it may have looked like.

Since the Dodgers would go on to win the 1959 World Series, that was apparently enough to ramp up Bell Brand’s interest in producing cards again as they’d make three more sets from 1960 to 1962.

The cards were originally offered as free inserts inside bags of Bell Brand potato chips and corn chips. I’ve scoured the Internet for pictures of the actual bags in which they came but haven’t had any luck. If anyone comes across a picture I’d sure appreciate it if you could point me to it in the comments section below this article.

Given that they were placed inside potato chip and corn chip bags, you can imagine the wear they endured and how hard they can be to find in top condition. And even though they were wrapped in plastic, you’ll still frequently find copies that show evidence of contact with the potato chip oil.

In this picture of a wrapped 1962 Bell Brand Koufax, you can clearly see the oil stain along the lower lefthand border.

1958 Bell Brand Koufax

This is probably my favorite of the four Bell Brand Koufax cards. It’s not necessarily the best-looking, in my opinion, with its sepia color tone and somewhat foggy image of Koufax inside the picture frame border. But that unique design is what makes it easily standout from the other three. Its historic value is quite high, too, given this was Bell Brand’s way to contribute to the hype of the Dodgers first season in Los Angeles. One of my favorite parts of the card is actually the reverse side as it mentions his blinding speed and inexperience. His K/9 of roughly 10.6 in his 1957 season stat line was a hint of the dominance that was to come.

The Koufax card is the key to the 10-card set that featured fellow Hall of Famers Roy Campanella, Don Drysdale, Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider. I usually see these in PSA 8 condition sell for $3,000 to $4,000. There are a couple of PSA 9 copies floating around somewhere and I’d love to watch the bidding on those if they ever come up for auction.

1960 Bell Brand Koufax

This is the second most difficult of the four to collect. Card #9 in the 20-card set features a young Koufax hunched over on the mound at the Dodgers spring training facility in Vero Beach, FL. The color photo is a big improvement over the 1958 sepia image but I wish the weather would have been nicer the day of the photo shoot. The cloud cover leaves the image with a gloomier feel compared to the sharp, bright images on the 1961 and 1962 cards. The back side mentions Koufax tying Bob Feller’s then record of 18 strikeouts in a game and offers clues as to which products featured these cards: bags of 39-cent, 49-cent, and 59-cent potato chips as well as 29-cent and 49-cent corn chips.

As a side note, Snider and Walter Alston are the only other two Hall of Famers in this much larger set. For some reason, Don Drysdale was dropped and wouldn’t appear again until the 1962 set.

1961 Bell Brand Koufax

The 1961 Bell Brand Koufax card looks very similar to the 1960 issue except for the bluer sky and different camera angle. There were again 20 players in the set but you’ll notice that Koufax’s issue is actually #32 in the set. That’s because Bell Brand deviated from sequential numbering and went instead with a system that utilized each player’s jersey number. Confusing, maybe, but it earns a couple of points for creativity in my book. It’s a special card as it marked the first of his six-season run of absolutely torching the competition during the back half of his career.

1962 Bell Brand Koufax

This would be the last year that Bell Brand would produce Dodgers baseball cards. And these were their highest quality print runs. The photos were higher resolution and were much glossier. The Dodgers would move from the Los Angeles Coliseum to pitcher-friendly Chavez Ravine in 1962 but unfortunately Koufax would not be able to enjoy a full season there due to injury. He would, however, throw the first of his four no-hitters in June that year and would earn “Player of the Month” distinction. Surprisingly, that was the only time in his career he had earned that title.

Oddball cards, yes. But the Bell Brand Koufax cards are some of the most fun and challenging to collect. Great imagery, huge historic value, and a small piece of regional Southern California history are enough to place these high on the list of any Koufax collector.