Recent Pick Ups

 Three great new pickups for me recently.

As some of you already know, I collect certain stamped back T206s.  These purple number back stamps rarely seem to show up and when they do, I always try to get them.  Well, a fellow collector recently reached out to me because he was selling off some of his stamped cards.  He had a couple of the purple number stamps and he knew I collected these specific stamps.  

We came together on price and I landed these two beauties.

These stamps are usually accompanied by pencil writing on them including other numbers and scribbles.  I have no idea what the numbers mean and have never been able to decipher any patterns with them.  

I don't know what the writing means in relation to the purple numbers either.  I just assume the numbers are the order in which they were acquired by the collector that stamped them way back when.  They are not stamped in alphabetical order so they aren't organized that way.  

The highest number I've seen so far is 122.  I have no idea how high the stamps go other than that.

The other pick up is this W565 panel of Schwartz and Stribling.  I needed the Stribling for my set, but there is no way I'm cutting this panel apart just to have a single of him.  This will remain a nicely cut panel.

I wrote about this set recently here.  There are only five boxers in the set and I am now missing just the Benny Leonard for completion of the boxers.  They don't show up that often, but I'll find my Leonard for a fair price someday.  I was pretty excited to have gotten this panel.

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

Recent Pick Ups

 It's been a little while since I shared some new pick ups.

I've picked up a few new cards since my last pick ups post, but I only have a few of them scanned at this time, so I'm just sharing five tonight. 

Also I'm working on a trade for some new E98s that I'll share with you when I have them.  I'm pretty excited about those ones.

Two of these recent cards are baseball and three are boxing.  You know me, I like those boxing cards.

We'll start with the boxing cards.  The first one is a not so commonly seen card; a W565 strip card of Ace Hudkins.  

Sorry about the blurriness of this one.  I like the huge borders on the left and bottom.  It was obviously on the bottom left corner of the sheet.  I picked this one up because of the borders and the fact that you don't see it very often.  I'm not saying this is a rare issue by any means, but it's not everywhere on eBay everyday either.

Next up is a pair of boxing cards from the same set.  These are W529-7 Big Heads.  I really like this set for the colors and the comic-like images.  These have the same checklist as the more common 529-1 set of 10 boxers.

I should clarify that I am not 100% certain these are the type 7 W529s but I think they are. These two examples are really nice ones too.  No creases and well cut long ago.  The colors just pop in person as well.  The bold solid backgrounds are striking.  The boxer's names are printed along the top of the card.

The next card to show you is a really cool little card from another set that you don't see all the time.  You can usually find some on eBay with ridiculously high buy it now prices, but not usually affordable examples.  

This is a 1933 E285 Rittenhouse Candy Co. card.  These are little cards with the design of a playing card, so it's no surprise there are 52 cards in the set.  On the backs of the cards in a letter that is included in the words Rittenhouse Candy Co.  The idea was that if you could spell out the full name you could win a prize, however even after all these years it has never been spelled out in full.  

My card has the U on the reverse.  Nothing special there.  Oh well.  There should be small borders at the top and bottom of the card and no borders on the right or left sides.  They come in several different colors but not in multiple colors per card. 

The last card to share is another E90-1 for my set in progress.  I'm (very) slowly working on this set, adding a new card every few months maybe.  This is one of my favorite sets but there are so many really tough cards in this one that I don't know if I'll ever complete it.  The Joe Jackson is a pipe dream for me.  

This example is of Bob Groom and you can see it is severely miscut to the right.  So much so that you can see the card next to Bob.  It's just a little tiny sliver of the next card, but I think it might just be another Bob Groom card.  Yes, there are two holes punched in this one, but you know I don't care about that.  I think the miscut is just too cool to make the holes matter.

Well, that's some of my recent pick ups guys.  I hope you enjoyed them.  Let me know what you've recently added to your collection.  I'd love to hear from you.

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

Recent Pick Ups - Boxing Edition

Well, I've picked up a few cards the last couple months and a few of them are boxing cards.

Along with baseball cards, I also collect prewar boxing cards.  Albeit a little more passively than baseball cards.  There are a lot of different boxing sets out there and some are really cool and others not so much. 

I'm currently working on 11 different boxing sets.  Here are some of my newer pick ups.

 

Abe Attell is my favorite old boxer.  He was a go between guy between the Chicago Black Sox and the gamblers and was a pretty good fighter to boot.  I love picking up a new Abe card.

 

 

 

This is an example of a Decalco Litho card.  There are twenty cards in the set and this is my third.  I find these to be difficult to come across and decent prices so I have happy to find this example of Irish Patsey Cline. 

 

 

 

This is a W529 Big Head version  There are ten of these and they are recognizable by there crude drawings.  These are also a bit more difficult to find and I'm thrilled to have this one.

 

 

 

This W529 example is also of Fred Fulton. As you can see it is the same pose as the big head card above but much better quality.  I love this card for the type at the top of the card and the clean cut. 

 

I picked up some other cards recently too, but wanted to focus on the boxing in this post;  I hope some of you are interested in these like I am.

 

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







W590 Jack Johnson

One of my collecting friends recently picked up this W590 Jack Johnson.

W590 is a strip card set featuring multiple sports with black and white photos instead of colorized drawings like many other strip sets from the 20's.  The set is dated between 1925 and 1931 with multiple printings between those years.  There are team change variations due to trades and some guys have a description change to their status in their sport. 

Various sports represented in the W590 set

Baseball is the most represented sport in the set with about 40 players represented.  There are also athletes from wrestling, boxing, football, horse racing, tennis, golf, swimming, cycling, a strongman and some non-sport personalities as well.

One of the most sought after cards in the set is the Red Grange football card considered his rookie card.  Also the rookie card of golfer Walter Hagen is in the set. Within the baseball checklist, there are super stars Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Lou Gehrig leading the way.

The complete checklist is not currently complete as just a couple years ago three new boxers were discovered from the set.  It stands to reason there may still be more uncatalogued cards to be found. 


Well, I wanted to highlight the boxing card of Jack Johnson in this post as that is the card my friend was able to pick up.  He ended up getting it for a steal to be honest.  A seller on eBay with zero feedback had it listed as a Buy It Now (BIN) for $25 but nobody pulled the trigger.  Likely due to the zero feedback.  He then relisted it in an auction format starting at $1.00 and my friend placed a little $7.00 snipe on it.  Well, that was enough to win it in the end. 

 

When he got the card in hand, he examined it with a loupe and has determined it to be the real deal.  Even in the low grade it's in, it was a great deal for this fairly hard to find HOF boxer Jack Johnson card. 

It was printed after he lost his championship and it used to say "Ex-Champion" where there is paper loss in front of "Heavyweight" and under where it should say "JACK". 

Well I hope you enjoy the card as much as I do.

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

W519 and Decalco Litho Co. of Hoboken, NJ

With my recent pick ups of a couple of W519's I wanted to post a little more about these cards.

Image courtesy of Oldcardboard.com

There are two types of W519 baseball cards, and two types of the Type I variety.  This means there are types W519-1-1, W519-1-2 and W519-2.  The Type I's are the numbered variety and the Type II's are not numbered. 

The two varieties of the numbered Type I's come with the numbers either in black (Type 1-1) or blue (Type 1-2).  The blue numbered cards are much harder to find than the black numbered cards and carry a premium of about 5x that of the other types of W519's.  These Type 1-1's have 20 cards in the set with 18 portraits and 2 full body poses and they have various color backgrounds.  The Type 1-2's (blue numbers)  are believed to have 10 cards in the set.

The Type II's are unnumbered and all have blue backgrounds.  There are ten cards in this checklist.  The unnumbered Type II's are a little more common that the numbered cards.

Below is a checklist of the three sets borrowed from my supporter Oldcardboard.com.

Please note: Cards in both W519 Numbered sets are numbered on the card; for the W519 Unnumbered set they are not. The numbers in parenthesis for the W519-2 Unnumbered set indicate the sequence numbers (based on player's last name) that are generally used by collectors for checklist purposes. 

Card #
W519-1-1 (Black #s)	W519-1-2 (Blue #s)	W519-2 (Unnum)	Player
1	16	(8)	Guy Morton
2	17	(7)	Rube Marquard
3	18	(3)	Gabby Cravath (Gavvy)
4	19	(6)	Ernie Krueger
5	20	(10)	Babe Ruth
6	-	-	George Sisler
7	-	-	Rube Benton
8	-	-	Jimmie Johnston
9	-	-	Wilbur Robinson (Wilbert)
10	-	-	Johnny Griffith
11	-	-	Frank Baker
12	-	-	Bob Veach
13	-	-	Jesse Barnes
14	-	-	Leon Cadore
15	-	-	Ray Schalk
16	11	(5)	Kid Gleasen (Gleason)
17	12	(9)	Joe Murphy
18	13	(4)	Frank Frisch
19	14	(2)	Eddie Collins
20	-	-	Wallie Schang
-	15	(1)	Eddie Cicotte

W519-1-1

These cards were produced by The Decalco Litho Co. of Hoboken, NJ.  They also produced the closely related W521 baseball card set.  The W521 set shares the same checklist as the W519-1-1 set but all the images are reversed.  They are also numbered. 

You can see the Decalco Litho Co. of Hoboken NJ printed on the side of the cards on some occasions.  See the W519-1-1 Marquard at right.  Marquard and Sisler are the two that are found with the side writing usually, but I recently picked up a Rube Benton that also shows part of the side writing.  You can see it on my last blog post of recent pick ups here.

The Decalco Litho Co. started in Hoboken in 1908 under the name American Transfer Pictures & Printing Co.  It was later incorporated in 1918 as Decalco Litho Company, Inc and shortly thereafter printed these sets. 

Decalco Litho also produced a set of boxing cards.  These are fairly tough to come by and complete the set.  Below are a couple examples from the boxing set.  The Jack Britton and Jack Dempsey are pictured here.

The boxing set has boxers and wrestlers and has 20 cards in the set as well.  My supporter, Prewarcards.com, has a writeup about these here.  They are classified as W519/W521 as well.

W519 Boxers Britton and Dempsey

 

The boxing set comes in both corrected and reversed images and some color variations.  You can see all the examples on Adam Warshaw's website of boxing strip cards.  Some of the cards can also be found with the Decalco Litho of Hoboken, NJ typed on the side of the card. 

 



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