Trading Cards Again

Remember trading cards when you were younger?  I do.  Unfortunately I don't know anyone anymore who collects cards like I do.

I took quite a break from the hobby in the last year and a half or so and I've been getting back into it more and more the last few months.  Hence the posts starting on my blog again.  Anyway, one of the things that I have gotten into recently is the idea of trading again.  I found some nice trading groups online and am hoping to make some new hobby pals and start trading to build some sets.

I put a new link in the right sidebar at the top of my blog that links to a website I set up just for trading.  If this is something you do, please check it out and hopefully we can trade something.  Anything.  I don't care too much at this point what I'm trading, I just want to get some good experience under my belt, meet a few people and maybe get into a trading group or two. 

I've decided to focus on sets I already had some cards for and that led to the following:

1. 1954 Topps
2. 1966 Topps
3. 1969 Deckle Edge
4. 1970-79 Topps
5. 1981 Topps

I've also put a few others on the list but these are my priorities for now.  Of course, I'm still very into prewar cards and would trade those as well, but my new site is more dedicated to postwar stuff. 

So come on guys and gals, let's trade something!

Enjoy the hobby all...it's a great one.

Things You Should Know :: '33 Goudey & Miller

Continuing with my posts on Things You Should Know about the prewar hobby, I'd like to talk about two cards from 1933 sets.  One of which was actually not even printed in 1933. 

I'm talking about the 1933 Goudey (R319) Napoleon Lajoie and the 1933 George C. Miller (R300) Ivy Miller cards.  Both of these cards are rare and the stories behind them are what you should know.  Let's begin with the Lajoie.

In 1933 Goudey created one of the best sets of the era.  The set has four Babe Ruths and two Lou Gehrigs in it.  Plus many other greats of the time.  But any kid trying to complete the set back in 1933 had one huge problem on their hands.  Card number 106 seemed impossible to find. And, in fact, it was impossible to find.  Goudey didn't make a card 106, so everyone had a hole in their set and would keep buying packs over and over again in vain trying to finish off their sets.

Some collectors were so upset that they mailed off letters to the Goudey offices in Boston requesting the missing card.  Well, Goudey must have gotten enough letters because when they produced the 1934 set, they included a card number 106 of Napoleon Lajoie and sent them to those people who asked for it.  Due to this method of distribution, the card is extremely rare today and is obviously the key card of the 1933 set.   Notice that the card has the same baseball scene in the background as is seen in the 1934 Goudey set.

The second card I want to discuss is the 1933 George C. Miller Ivy Andrews.  Unlike the Lajoie of the 1933 Goudey set, this card was actually available in packs.  It was advertised that a collector could send in a complete set of these cards in exchange for either and baseball, a glove or a ticket to a major league game.  They collector would get his cards back with a cancellation in the form or either diamond holes punched in them or the bottom of the card trimmed off.  This way, they could not be used a second time for redemption.

The company wanted to limit the number of prizes is was going to have to give out, so they severly shortprinted the Ivy Andrews card.  By doing so, they could sell a lot of cards without having to give away that many prizes.  It is because of this that so few Ivy Andrew cards exist today and when you do see one, it will likely be cancelled with the bottom of the card trimmed off.

These are two more cards you need to know if you're in the prewar baseball card hobby. 

I hope you enjoy my blog and if you have any ideas for topics you want to see, please let me know. 

Enjoy the hobby all...it's a wonderful one.

Prewar Hobby :: Things You Should Know

If you are going to be in the prewar baseball card hobby there are many things you should know. A broad knowledge of the hobby can only help you as you embark on your endeavor.

There are many collectors out there who have been in the hobby for years who may still not know anything about cards from sets that they don't collect. They may be extremely knowledgeable about the sets they do collect, and I think that is great, but when it comes to other sets they may not know a thing. I think it's always good to know as much as possible, even if you don't collect certain cards.

Before going any further, let me be clear by saying that I am not an expert in any prewar set. I do however know a decent amount about these cards in a broad sense. And I just wanted to share some of the basic stuff that you should know if you're going to collect prewar cards. Many of you may think this is all common knowledge and you may already know all of it, but this is more for those collectors who may be new to the hobby or just never heard of some of this stuff.

Let's begin with the 1909-11 T206 set, also know to collectors as "The Monster".  It's a big set at 524 cards.  I'm not going to get into too much detail here about this set as books have been written about it already.  I just want to touch on some of the main points.

Image courtesy OldCardboard.com

Many people consider their sets complete at 520 cards due to the difficulty in obtaining the last four cards conveniently known as "The Big Four".  These include the following:

1. Honus Wagner - The Holy Grail of baseball cards. This is a rare card and estimates vary regarding how many exist. For this post I will say there are around 50 of them out there.
2. Eddie Plank - Another rare card in the set.  I don't have an estimate for how many of these are out there.
3. Sherry Magee (Magie) error card - Magee's name was misspelled early on in the print run as Magie and was caught quickly and corrected.  The resulting error card is a tough one to come by, but not nearly as difficult as Wagner or Plank.
4. Joe Doyle, NY Nat'l - I did a post about this card in 2008, you can read it HERE.

Another fact you should know about the T206 set is that there are 16 different brands advertised on the reverse of the cards.  Not all fronts can be found with all the different backs however.  The sixteen brands are (in alphabetical order, not scarcity order):

Image courtesy T206baseball.com

1. American Beauty
2. Broad Leaf
3. Carolina Brights
4. Cycle
5. Drum
6. El Principe de Gales
7. Hindu
8. Lenox
9. Old Mill
10. Piedmont
11. Polar Bear
12. Sovereign
13. Sweet Caporal
14. Tolstoi
15. Ty Cobb
16. Uzit

There are currently debates in the hobby regarding whether or not the Ty Cobb back is really a T206 back and whether or not Coupon (mainly type 1) backs should be included as T206 cards.  One thing to know about the Ty Cobb back is that it is only found with a Ty Cobb Red Background Portrait front and it is always printed in green.  There are reprints out there with the ad printed in blue and these are always fake.

That's it for my first post about things you should know.  I'm going to have many more of these so hopefully you enjoyed it.  I look forward to getting back into my blog as I took quite some time off in the last year. 

Enjoy the hobby all...It's a great one.

Ugly Babes

George Herman "Babe" Ruth was well known the world over.

It was because if this that there were many different cards of him issued over the years, both from the US and from several other countries as well.

Now, for a guy who was so well known, and so darn popular, why did he have so many cards that were just such horrible depictions of him? I mean seriously, look at these examples guys.

The first card I'd like to look at is his R377 Eclipse Import from 1933.



Now, I hear ya, this whole set it completely full of bad artwork, and some people like that part of it (I guess), but couldn't they of at least made him look like he was wearing pants instead of looking like a grandpa in his pj's with a blanket over his lap?


And what's up with his hand? It looks completely flattened and useless. He's not chowin' on any hotdogs with that thing


He really looks like he's about two minutes from passing away on this card. I'm just sayin'.


Here is another example that I think falls a bit short of truely representing the Great Bambino as he should be remembered.

This one is his 1923 German Baseball Transfer issue. Here he looks like a pudgy little bat boy. Honestly, he looks like he can't be a day over 8 years old and just finished filming a scene in The Sandlot or something.

Now, this last one is by far the best. This is a 1949 JK 5 Tohoku Karuta (Japanese Issue) Babe Ruth card.

Every time I see this card I laugh.

He's apparently lost his teeth and has that empty mouth look where his lower lip is pushed out like a kid who is whining about something.

Plus, according to the Japanese back then he was a blond and had matching yellow eyes.

The remarkable thing about this horrible drawing is that is unmistakably the Babe. So as bad as it is, he really was an odd looking guy and still somehow resembled this chicken scratch artwork.

Well, I just wanted to show all of you some of the worst images of The Sultan of Swat that I can remember seeing on a baseball card. Hopefully you enjoy them as mush as I do.

Enjoy the hobby all, it's a fantastic one...

ISA Grading Ad...Really guys?

ISA Grading Takes Professionalism Seriously

I'm not trying to say I'm perfect and never mispell anything or use questionable grammer, but then again I'm not doing this for a living and I'm not trying to turn this blog into a business. So I don't mind if I make a mistake here or there and my readers catch them. But I was floored when I first saw this ad for ISA Grading in a magazine.

It's just one of my pet peeves I guess, but before a company sends something to print, or pays to have something produced, or what have you, I think I should be able to hold them to a higher standard than myself. Especially if they are trying to introduce themselves to potential customers and they would like to be taken seriously.

Here is the ad that had me so annoyed...

The first time I read through the ad, I found four problems. Four. Are they serious? How many people read this copy before they sent it to be printed and let their reputation be advertised as this unprofessional?

"Oh, this is were I want to send my cards to be graded. These guys are obviously detail oriented. They reviewed their own ad so closely that only 4 things were missed. I could probably be sure that any card I buy that they have reviewed should have been just as closely examined and that only only 4 scratches, dinged corners, bits of paperloss, spots of writing, or any other problem that would normally downgrade a card should be missed as well. In other words, a card they say is a '10' could have up to 4 blatant condition issues."

Let's take a closer look now.

1. They failed to capitalize their own name: In the first sentence, they typed their name "international Sports Authentication".

2. They offer "expert grading, great rates, and quick turnaroudn".

3. They ensure a "tip-notch" grading relationship as opposed to a "top-notch" one.

4. When informing us of their location, they abbreviate Michigan as "Mi" instead of the proper state abbreviation method of "MI".

I'd love to hear from a representative of the company if they want to claim these were all intentional mistakes and meant as a joke.

Hats off to ISA. You guys are true profesiionally dedecaded to makeing me feel like i'm getting the bestest review of the cards I collact.

Enjoy the hobby all.

Recent Pick Ups

I've been getting a bunch of new stuff lately, both on the internet and from the last Philly Show. Is it still called the Philly Show by the way, really? Anyway, I really like that show even if some of the dealers complain about the table prices going up since Heritage started running it.

I'll try to get scans of all my new cards as well as other things, but my scanner isn't working right now. My old computer crashed and when we got a new one, we kept our old Dell printer/scanner and I can't get it to work yet with the new HP computer.

I do have images of these three new items however, and am happy to share them with you.

First up: Two new cards for my horizontal collection. These aren't baseball cards, but I really don't care. They are E77 American Caramel Co. "Prize Fighter Caramels".

I've been liking these horizontal boxing caramels more and more lately. I have a few of the "Scrappers" set from Philadelphia Caramel Co., so when these ones came up on eBay a little while ago I was excited to have a chance to pick up some examples from a different set.

After winning them, I checked out Adam Warshaw's site that identifies several of the many many different boxing issues and saw that he says that these are "very tough to find". Hey, that's cool and makes me even more happy to have them. I just hope I haven't misidentified them or something.

Okay, so the other card that I have an image of (for now) is an upgrade to one of my Jersey City C46's, John "Rube" Kissinger:

I am always excited to pick up another Jersey City card! I know what you're thinking, "This is an upgrade?" Yes, it's an upgrade.

My first one had some major paperloss on the sides of the front on both sides of his head and it has always bothered me. I picked the first one with the paperloss because I didn't have it yet and needed it. This one will someday be upgraded as well, but I'm very happy to have this one. I'm only missing Butler, Jones and Wells now to complete the 9 card subset.

There were recently a Butler and Jones on eBay but I didn't put my snipe high enough to win them. Them another Jones came up, but it was a little too nice and I knew my high bid wouldn't be enough, so I didn't get that one either. No problem, I'll get them someday.

Well, I know it's not much, only three new cards, but when I get my scanner back up and running, I'll get a lot of scans up for show.

Enjoy the hobby all, it's a great one.

Tristar Flop

Like many prewar collectors I'm a big fan of the Obak sets. Between the years 1909 - 1911, packs of Obak cigarettes came with a card featuring players of the Pacific Coast League and the Northwestern League. These cards are widely considered to be some of the most beautiful prewar cards produced.


You can differentiate between the the three years quite easily. The 1909's actually have a slightly different look on the front, and the 1911's have sevaral cards that have a sort of drippy gooey-like background that are only found in that series. But the easiest way to determine the year is by flipping the card ove and looking at the back design; each year has a different back.

1909----------------------1910----------------------1911

While I could go on quite a bit longer on the original Obaks (and I most likely will in a future post), I'm actually writing this post to ask this question: What were they thinking?


"They" are Tristar Productions and they have released a new line of cards (I know what you're thinking, "Modern cards?!") that have borrowed the name of the old Obaks and the back designs for it's modern release. And for some reason, I couldn't resist seeing what they were like.

I was expectedly unimpressed and furthermore left scratching my head at how these things made it past the various stages of design and approval before they started printing them. They did nail the most spectacular part of the Obak design; the amazing sunset backgrounds.


They decided to make the player's image really dark and dropped the quality of the image so much that the guy is actually pixelated like they took the photo with a really cheap 1.5 megapixel camera.


The scan I took actually brightens up the image considerably as the card in hand looks as if there was no light in front of the guy. You can barely see him on the actual card.


Each pack comes with some old timers in there pictured with their minor league squads and this is kind of cool, except they decided to make them black and white images of the players set against the colorful background and they just don't look right.


Here are the ones I got in my pack:



I did get one card in the pack that I'm happy with though. In each pack, you also get a reprint of one of the original Obaks. I got a reprint of one of the most sought after of all original Obaks. It is the Victoria Bees of the Northwestern League player named Ten Million. Yes, that's right, his name is Ten Million. It's written right there on the card.

I've always liked this card and it will be a long time before I can actually afford an original, so it was kind of cool to pull this card from the pack.



It's safe to say I won't be buying any more of these packs, so I'm glad that I got one card I liked out my trial pack.

Happy collecting everyone, enjoy the hobby.