No, The Pizza Was Not Good

I have been working on my La Pizza Royale set the last few weeks, chasing down all the color variation cards of two former Durham Bulls players that appeared in the 1970 Expos team set. 

Mauch played for the Bulls during the early 1940s, Staub during the early 1960s.  

So, last week something happened in my pursuit of collecting these cards.  I revisited the old Google website to see if I could dig out anymore information about the cards.  Anything.  When you type in "Montreal Expos La Pizza Royale" the first hit is a Trading Card Database page with the checklist.  

You can click on the 1970 sets link on the page and find checklists for all four color variations of these Expos cards.  Look, it's right next to Jack In Box.  

I really do not need the checklist though.  There are blue, green, red, and yellow cards of Staub and Mauch.  I need eight total cards to complete this little project.  So, at this point I typed in "La Pizza Royale" and I started to get suspicious.  

There are no La Pizza Royale stores.  

That's really not all that suspicious by itself considering that these cards came out in the early 1970s, but do you know how much people love pizza?  Type in the name of a pizza place that closed in your hometown and there is likely something about it floating around on the internet.  

Anyone in St. Louis remember Pantera's?  I know there is still one in O'Fallon, but there are people selling their old menus online, as well as several sites that have stories about the old anti-St. Louis style pizza.  

So, after a deep dig here is what I know:

1. The only "La Pizza Royale" restaurant is located in France.  I do not know if the pizza is good, but it looks a little weird.  Perhaps the French are as talented at pizza as southerners are at pasta.  Not a compliment. 

2. The "La Pizza Royale" set was actually created by Bob Solon.  Here is a snippet from a write up about the man who just went ahead and printed his own baseball cards.  

"Bob developed an affinity, or perhaps more accurately an affliction, for going after regional and team issues in quantity. Anyone could go to a store and buy the one annual issue of Topps cards, but Cardinal postcards, Seattle Rainiers issues, Kahns, Kelloggs and other regionals were a challenge................ The 1970 La Pizza Royale Expos was a set that I had been looking for to add to my type card collection. I finally found one card a few years ago. It is amazing that I found a single card. I should have asked Bob for a set. Bob and friends made up the name La Pizza Royale as well as about 800 sets and issued them to collectors for a few dollars a set. The photography, write-ups and sales were quite an accomplishment and a lot of work".

Fairly certain Bob would get slapped with a cease and desist order faster than you could order a real pizza from a real restaurant if he just printed a bunch of cards of Major League Baseball teams today.  

3.  The "La Pizza Royale" cards are still a neat little set, and I will just go ahead and finish off the set since I have already started.  In fact, I just picked up the red copy of the Gene Mauch card last week.  

4.  Yes, I am a little disappointed, but it is a three day weekend and there are several local sports teams in action.  I am off to watch a few games.  

Keep Durham Odd

It's been a little slow the past two weeks looking for additional color variations of the La Pizza Royale cards I have been collecting of former Durham Bulls players Rusty Staub and Gene Mauch.  The cards have multiple color variations, I have picked up a few already......

but the remaining cards are going to be tough.  The Staub cards are especially going to be tough.  A little disappointing, but along the way searching to find these Canadian pizza cards, I ran into a few other oddball cards of some former Durham Bulls players.

I really like this group of cards.   

The first card comes from a Bob Parker set.  He did a bunch of hand drawn picture sets, but I do not know much about him beyond the style of cards he made, and several of them were of the Reds.  This card is from his 1977 Cincinnati Reds set.  The orange card stock is unique to say the least.....

Frank McCormick played for the Durham Bulls during the 1936 season.  He went on to win the National League MVP for the Reds in 1940, and as it says underneath his name on the card, is in the team's Hall of Fame.  The Reds also won the World Series that season.  The little pictures around McCormick remind me a lot of the cartoons on the backs of Topps cards.  Definitely something different.  I believe there is a card in this set of Johnny Vander Meer, who was also a Durham Bulls player, so I might need to find that one.  

Speaking of Vander Meer....

This is from the 1976 Laughlin Diamond Jubilee set, which celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the National League.  The cards all have this style of cartoon picture.  Vander Meer is not a Hall of Famer, but is a notable former Durham Bulls player because of the consecutive no-hitters in back to back starts during the 1938 season.  

The back of the card gives out some details about the two no hitters.  There are also other former Durham Bulls players in the Laughlin set, along a Cardinals player or two that might be worthy of some effort in the near future.  

Last card.  

This is from the 1947 Signal Gasoline set, which featured players from the Pacific Coast League.  From what I have read about Minor League Baseball during this era, the PCL was the most competitive and talent rich league outside of the Majors.  Some really good names played for these teams during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.  

This card reminds me a lot of the Frank McCormick card minus the orange card stock.  

Albosta pitched for the Durham Bulls during the 1941 season.  He won 15 games in just 23 games started, and had an ERA of only 1.74.  His time on the Durham Bulls actually gets mentioned on the back of the card.  He made it up to the Dodgers that same season where he got two spot starts.  

Albosta did not have much of a Major League career, but he missed several years for World War II.  He pitched the 1942 season for the Montreal Royals, who were a top Minor League affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers, but entered the Army at the end of the season.  He ended up pitching for the Pirates briefly after the war, but than played the rest of his career in the Minors.  

He played the last several years of his career with a semi-pro team in Saginaw, Michigan.  I drive through that town seemingly every year.  It's got the giant curved bridge in the middle of I-75.  

It's not the Mackinac Bridge, or the Ambassador Bridge.  Still unique.  

I wish I knew something more about this set, but I do not.  There are not many old Minor League cards, but the PCL seems to have quite a few.  This is my second PCL cards that is more than 50 years old.  I also have a manger card of long time Giants great Met Ott managing the Oakland Oaks.  This is from an early 1950s Mothers Cookies set.  

Always nice to find some interesting cards for the collection.  

Another of the La Pizza Royale

I found another La Pizza Royale card of a former Durham Bulls player this week.  Last week I made a post with my first card from this set featuring Rusty Staub.  This is obviously a manager card from the set, but Gene Mauch was a player while he was on the Durham Bulls during the 1943 season.  He has a few 1950s cards a player, but not manu. 

Here is the new Pizza Royale card. 

There are several different color variations for each of these cards.  This is the blue/purple card of the long time Major League manager.  There are a total of four colors in the set: blue, green, yellow, and red.  Hopefully I will get around to getting all four color variations of both the Mauch and Staub cards, but it is going to take a little bit of patience. 

This is my second Gene Mauch card that I have added to my Durham Bulls collection.  I know I have a bunch of his cards with the Angels and Twins too, but those are all sorted into sets.  This was my first from earlier this year......

Hopefully I will have a few more La Pizza Royale cards to post in the coming weeks. 

Royale LeGrand Orange

I do not always buy cards off of COMC, but rarely a week goes by where I do not visit the site and add a couple of items to my cart.  I use it as more of a place holder than an actual shopping cart.  

There are all sorts of great cards to explore, but I like to dig pretty deep on some of the items.  I have really been trying to find some unique cards for some of the players and teams I collect.  In the end, I will buy a large percentage of the cards in my cart, but usually not all at once.  Slowly over time.  

One of my most recent groupings of cards that I have explored has been the 1970 La Pizza Royale set.  They are Expos cards.  No, the Bulls were never an Expos affiliate, just a fluke that a group of their former players ended up in Montreal.  

So, a few of these cards have sat in my cart the past few weeks while I have tried to figure out more about them.  I still do not know much, but they look pretty neat.  

The cards come in different colors, but they all seem to be roughly around $5.  I was mainly interested in finding copies of the Gene Mauch and Rusty Staub cards.  Both played for the Bulls back in the day, both were important Major Leaguers for different reasons.  Since Ebay bucks rolled in the other day, and the COMC cards are double listed as Buy It Nows on the Bay, I rolled the dice on a copy of one of the Rusty Staub cards.  

Le Grand Orange in Montreal.  

I ended up with a copy of the green card.  The picture is the same no matter the color.  The position at the bottom is always written in French.   It's a really nice card too.  These La Pizza Royale cards are larger than normal cards, and they are on fairly thick card stock.  For cards that were likely a restaurant giveaway, they are as good as it gets.  

A quick comparison to a standard baseball card.  

There is a slight ding in the bottom left-hand corner of the Staub card, which probably helped keep the price more in line with the commons, but Staub is the best card in the in the La Pizza Royale set.  Overall, this is a great addition to my Durham Bulls collection, and likely the first of several La Pizza cards that I am hoping to find.