In addition to that nifty pile of 1960 Topps that I wrote up for the next Collect.com Auction, I also took note of a whole bunch of lots that ought to be particularly attractive to that vast and enthusiastic horde from Red Sox Nation.

Actually, when most of the stuff I’m talking about was produced, say the 1950’s to 1970’s, there was no such thing as Red Sox Nation, just the principality of Boston and its environs. The Red Sox Nation appellation would come in 1986 when their beloved Sox would tangle with my own Metsies in a World Series that seemed to nicely encapsulate the wide range of emotions that big-time fandom can entail.

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With the stuff in this auction, like great Sox team sets from Topps and Bowman in the early to mid-1950s, wonderful homemade plaques with vintage cards neatly installed or even a handsome pile of team-signed balls from a half century ago, this sale seems like a particularly enticing opportunity for modern citizens of this sovereign subculture.

Throw in a number of cool signed pieces, like a Ted Williams signed Life magazine, a 1967 Red Sox Yearbook with 23 signatures, including you know who, or even original Ted Williams artwork by Darryl Vlasak, and it’s pretty clear this sale needs broad dissemination in Beantown.

As a card guy, I certainly liked the idea of the 1950-52 Bowman and 1954-55 Topps Red Sox team sets, but as I mentioned earlier, a couple of card “plaques” also caught my attention, perhaps as much for their design and execution as the cards included.

What compels the most is the obvious conclusion that these things were put together by an old-time Sox fan, and back in a time when people thought of things like carefully installing vintage cards (not gluing) into attractively designed patterns and then nicely matting and framing the whole enterprise. Know anybody doing that kind of thing with the latest Superdooperpooper Refroocter?

One of the plaques is a nifty 1956 Topps team set set off with a Sox yearbook from that year and a ticket for an April 1956 game with the Washington Senators; a second plaque pictures the 1967 Topps Red Sox Stickers test issue, most of which I had never seen before.

Mix in some of the monsters, like the ultra-rare 1934 R304 Al Demaree Die-cuts of Lefty Grove and Rick Ferrell, and you can see there’s a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.

OK, I’ll admit that last was a stretch.