New Auction Wins

 I recently received my auction winnings from The Collector Connection March 2023 Auction. 

The Collector Connection is a great smaller auction house that specializes in lesser grade, lower priced cards and memorabilia.  These types of auctions are perfect for me as I don't have the budget to compete with the bidders in a major auction house like Robert Edward Auctions (REA).  

Don't get me wrong, The Collector Connection has some great featured items in their offerings, but the majority of their auctions are more in my league so I really like checking out what they have to offer.

I was checking out the auction with only a few days left in the auction and I put a bunch of little lots in my watchlist.  Then after going through the whole auction, I went back to my watchlist and chose a few lots to place bids on.

I then went on to something else and completely forgot about the auction until really late at night.  I was still up around 1:00am so I grabbed my computer and checked the results of the auction.  I found that I had won all four lots that I placed high bids on!  Nice.  I paid right after I received the invoice and waited for my winnings to arrive.

Then I forgot about them again.  A couple of nights ago my family was watching some tv at night and there was a knock on our front door.  We all looked at each other and said, "who would be coming to our door this late?".  I got up from my chair and checked the door.  There was nobody there.  Then I looiked around the front porch and noticed a couple of small packages were left on our table we have on the porch.  I brought them in and saw that one of them was for my wife, and the other one had a return address and name that I recognized.

It was the owner of The Collector Connection's name.  Then, of course, I remembered that I was waiting for my auction winnings.  The mailman had delivered the two packages to the wrong address, and one of my neighbors who had received them, brought them over to our house to deliver them to us.

Here is what I won in the auction.

I won a lot of five autographed 1980 Topps baseball cards.  I'm very slowly accumulating signed 1980 Topps and building the set with signed cards.

I also won a lot of two 1951 Topps Red Backs.  I bid on these win a low bid and then thought to check my want list to see if I already had thenn or if I needed them.  Turns out I already have both of them so these two are going into the dupes box.

Then I won two lots of 1970's Topps Football RCs.  There a several vintage football card RCs that I have been wanting for some time now so when I saw these two for decent prices I bid on them.  One is a 1973 Ken Stabler RC and the other is a 1975 Dan Fouts RC.  

I'm watching and bidding on some lots in other auctions right now.  I'll let you know how they go and if I win anything else, I'll post it here.

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

Recent Pick Up

 I recently picked up another 1921 W516-1 Becker Prize Back example!

I try to pick these up whenever I see them as long as they are reasonably priced.  I saw this one on eBay the other day and put a snipe on it.  It was ending while I was going to be working so I couldn't watch it end and snipe it myself.  

When I checked back the next night I saw I had won it and I was very excited to add another example to my collection.  It's a dupe for me, but I'll pick these up no matter if I have it or not.  

Here is the Doyle that I picked up.

If you've never seen these cards before, the back reads,

Save your tablet fronts and win a prize

L.A. Becker

I've always assumed that L.A. Becker was a teacher who would give these cards out to his/her students to remind them or some sort of game or something where they could win a prize for turning in their tablet fronts when they were done filling out their tablets in class.

Maybe they also turned these cards back into the teacher with their tablets.  Maybe they got to keep them.  Either way, how did they survive all these years?  How many could have been made in total?  I can only imagine there were not too many created by Becker.  The cards came in 10 card strips to the teacher would have had to buy these from a store and cut them up and written the notes on the backs of each card.  

And only one 10 card strip was used for these.  All the known examples are from the same 10 card strip checklist.  Here are the ones I have so far (less the two dupes).

There is an example of Peckinpaugh that has been confirmed but I have never seen one.  And the last two players that were on the strip that have not been confirmed are Ring and Kauf.  If you have one of those two with the Becker back please let me know.  I would love to see them.

I get excited every time I see these.  I know of one other collector who picks these up as well and he has like 25 or more of them so far.  He has the Peckinpaugh and has also never seen the Ring or Kauf with this back.

If you have any of these please contact me.  If you want to sell or trade what you have I would be interested in chatting with you.  

What do you think about these cards?  Do you like them too?  Let me know guys.

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

Recent Pick Ups

 Well, It's been a while since I posted anything.  And I apologize for that guys.  I've been extremely busy in life the last few months and my blog had to go on the back burner for a while.

So what have I been up to lately?  I've been slowly picking up some things but mainly working on my low grade T205 set.  I always liked the set, but it never really grabbed me until a few months ago.  I started grabbing low grade commons of cards I liked.

What I really enjoy about them is the color, especially when they are all pictured together.  I've put together the image below with some of my newer acquisitions.

I've always liked the Bates with the pink background and was thrilled to get the Wiltse one ear variation.  He goes in my NY Giants team set as well as my low grade set.  

These are all rough of course, but that's how I like them.  The colors still look great together.

I'm only up to 44 cards in the set so far but I'm enjoying the quest.  

What have you guys been working on lately?  

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

Recent Pick Up

 I recently won a lot in the last Love of the Game auction of a complete set (sort of) of 1946-49 American Nut & Chocolate pennants.

Just wanted to share this most recent acquisition with you all.  I placed a bid on this lot in the last Love of the Game auction and was pleasantly surprised it was enough to hold up over night after I went to bed.  

I already had a handful of mini pennants in my collection but I didn't have any of these ones.  This is basically a complete set of 16 pennants, one for each team in the majors at the time.  There are five variations bringing the actual total to 21 pennants and I may pursue those others in time.  But for now I'm content with the 16 I have.

The variations come in different color pennants, or a slightly different design for the team.  The teams with variations are the Dodgers, White Sox, Reds, Giants and Browns.  Trading Card Database (TCDb) has images of all the pennants except the Tigers variation, so I don't know what that one looks like.  

Here are the 16 I picked up.

They measure 1 3/4" by 4".  They came delivered from LOTG packaged in a couple really nice black frames with glass fronts and padding behind them ready for display.  Great job packing them by the way.  And very fast shipping.  

American Nut & Chocolate produced pins for each team as well that were packaged in boxes of candy with the pennants.  The treats were called Double Play and cost five cents a box.  

Years later, the company produced another 22 pennant set that included white pennants with a line drawing of a player along with a facsimile auto.  Those sets were sold for fifty cents back in 1950.  

Here are examples of the original Double Play box, both types of pennants and the pins.

I hope you enjoyed my latest pick up.  These are fun little pennants to collect and I'm hoping I eventually find some of the variations.

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

A Back Stamp Leads to a New Discovery for Me

 There are many many different stamps on the backs of T206s.

They range from images to dates to names or numbers.  I have an entire online project documenting these stamps.  I have known of one particular stamp for some time now, and have a few documented on my site, but I never knew anything about the person who stamped their name on the cards.

A recent post on Net54 mentioned this stamp and who the person was however.  Which led to a little more research and I was amazed at what I found out.

Here is the stamp I'm talking about. It reads:

L. KURZROK M.D.

9 E 96 ST. N.Y.C 28

As it turns out, Dr. Lawrence Kurzrok MD was a practicing physician in New York City for 41 years.  He retired to Longboat Key near Sarasota, FL in 1971 and passed away Feb 12, 1976. 

He was a specialist in obstetrics, gynecology and endocrinology and supervised the birth of over 10,000 babies.  

In the 1930's he ranked 10th nationally in tennis and won the Greater New York public courts title five times.  

He was a Navy Commander during WWII and received two battle stars.

All of this is amazing enough, but this is a vintage and prewar baseball card blog, so why am I going on about some doctor who stamped some cards?

Well, as it turns out, Dr. Kurzrok was a pioneer in card collecting and can be noted along with such names as Jefferson Burdick, Lionel Carter and Charles Bray.  He was the President of the Card Collectors Society of NY and often held meetings at his home located at the address stamped on his cards.

He would also meet in front of groups to discuss raising money for collecting clubs in high schools and colleges believing that collecting cards was a great way to learn about all sorts of things.  He one said:

 "The knowledge printed on these cards is so great you can't help but learn from them - You can learn anything from how to build a house or make a window frame to the names of the Kings of France."

The doctor had amassed a collection of over five million cards of all sorts of different subjects, but did state that his baseball cards were his favorite.  He had over 2,000 Old Judge cards at one point. 

After he passed away, Rob Lifson purchased the bulk of his collection and it has since been dispersed throughout the hobby.

Dr. Kurzrok was a pioneer I had never heard of before.  And I was fascinated to learn more about him.  He sounded like a really nice guy and someone I would've loved to have known.  

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

Starting a T205 Set

 I started thinking about what I want to collect these days and have landed on the T205 set.

This will be a long journey as there are many big names that I can't afford any time soon as well as several SPs and variations that cost a bit more than a common does.  

I've been working on the NY Giants subset for many years and have accumulated 15/22 (I'm not including the back variations that bring the true total of Giants to 24) of those so far.  In addition to those NY Giants cards, I also have eleven additional T205s bringing my grand total to 26 so far.  

There are 208 cards in a complete set.  However a master set is considered complete at 221 cards and even more when one considers the additional known errors.  I'll be focused on the 208 basic set for now.  After that maybe I'll expand to more cards.  

At 208 cards, it's not as large as the 524 card T206 set, but it poses quite a challenge of it's own.  There are 18 SPs in the set that are more difficult that regular cards.  Then there are a bunch of variations in the set as well.  

Some players, like in T206, have multiple cards in the set.  Hal Chase has three cards in the set and Eddie Collins and Roger Bresnahan have two cards each.  There are also twelve minor league cards in the set with HOFer Jimmy Collins being the key to those.  

There are three distinct styles of card in this set.  The National League cards have a portrait set against a colorful background and have a facsimile autograph at the bottom while the American League cards also have a portrait but it is set inside a diamond (either an infield or made up of bats) without a signature but rather a name plate or scroll at the bottom.  

Minor league player cards are some of the more beautiful cards in my opinion with several different variations in the design but all easily recognizable as a minor league card.  These have action shots as opposed to portraits.

American League                       National League                       Minor League

In many collector's opinion the T205 set is the nicest looking of all the early tobacco sets.  I chose the minor league subset as some of the five best looking sets of all time in a list I made back in 2020 here.

I'll keep ya'll updated on my progress on this set here on my blog.  I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I do.

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

Latest Pick Up

 Hey Guys and Gals!  I know it's been a while since I've posted anything here.  But I wanted to share my latest pick up.

Of course, it's another E98.  And I picked it up quite some time ago, but never posted it.  It's an Eddie Collins green background.

This brings my total for the set up to 26/30 and leaves me with needing a Cobb, Lajoie, Wagner and Young to complete the set.  I'm not likely to get a Cobb, Wagner or Young anytime soon, but have a line on a Lajoie that I may be able to afford.  

Young will be the last card I buy for this set as I can't stand the idea of paying Cy Young prices for an Irv Young card.  I always told myself I would never buy that card or any other Irv Young card that is selling as a Cy Young card.  

But, when I get down to just the Young, I might change my mind to complete the set.  We'll see.

Here is the composite image of my current set as it stands now.

I really like the randomness of the background colors in this image.  I only know of one collector who has completed the master set of 120 cards from this set.  That's each card in all four colors. Of course I'm not going for that craziness.

Which are your favorite background colors?  Blue is my favorite, then orange, then green, and lastly red.  I think that red is my least favorite because so many of the cards found in the Black Swamp Find were red backgrounds and that just killed them for me.  

Blues are the least available ones in my personal experience working on the set so I tried to pick up blue backgrounds as much as possible.  When I couldn't find a blue I would search our orange backgrounds. 

Well thanks for reading and I hope you are all doing well.

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