In 1993 The Ted Williams Card Company made its debut in the baseball card business with a slickly produced 160-card set featuring mostly players from the past, including many of the Tier One Hall of Famers, like, for example, Ted Williams. This striking 57-inch-tall color cardboard standee features Teddy Ballgame as the dominant image in a portrait that is well known by even casual fans, alongside artwork of the great slugger “in action.” The standee is complete with three discrete elements, the 31-by-57-inch main structure that notes “Premiere Edition ’93 Available Now,” plus a 15-by-33-inch base and an additional panel that affixes to one side with “Ted Williams Card Company” in stacked vertical letters. The entire piece is in outstanding condition, seemingly undisturbed for three-plus decades, nudged only by wrinkles to Ted’s cap in the portrait section and to his cap and shoulder of the in-action painting. The Ted Williams Card Company was very innovative in its time, combining many of the new printing technologies at the time with an intriguing checklist that included cards of many of the great Negro League stars of bygone eras, along with cards from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Ted Williams had arguably been the leading early voice in championing the cause of the great Negro Leagues stars, an effort he put in motion most notably in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech in 1966. “I hope that someday, the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson can … be added to the symbol of the great Negro League players that are not here only because they were not given a chance,” Williams told the crowd that day.