REA Spring 2019 Auction

The 2019 Robert Edward Auctions Spring Auction is now open for bidding and I wanted to share a few of my favorite items with you.

I've gone through the cards that interest me in the current REA auction and pulled a bunch of cards (and a photo) that are some of my favorites.  Lets start with the photo shall we.

This is an original Type 1 photo of Negro League legend Josh Gibson that was used for his 1950-51 Toleteros rookie card.  I'm including an image of the actual card (also in the auction) for comparison.

 

 

Here is the 1893 Just So Jesse Burkett Rookie.  This card is interesting in that is has been restored, but it is so rare (2 known) that it doesn't really matter.   When it was originally discovered it was just the photo part of the card. The entire mount was missing.  The owner found a different Just So of an actress card and had professional restoration done attaching the original photo to the actress mount.

 



 



I don't necessarily collect 19th century cards, but I do like a lot of them.  I particularly like the N172 Old Judge Mike "King" Kelly cards.  Here are two nice examples side by side.  An SGC 6 and SGC 3.5.  I actually like the image on the 3.5 more than on the 6. 

 

Another awesome 19th century set is the 1887 N175 Gypsy Queen set.  They are more rare than their Old Judge counterparts.  I like the Gypsy Queen logo at the top of the cards.  This example is a really nice one as it is a horizontal, two player and HOF card all in one.  It features HOFer Tim Keefe with his teammate Danny Richardson.  It has a nice strong image as well which is another big plus for these cards.

 

 





Now let's move on to the 20th century and the prewar cards that I like in the auction. 

This one would fit right in to my collection as it is a nice low grade card.  I still won't win it, but I'd love to own it.  The 1911 E94 Hans Wagner gold background version.  I'm drawn to the gold versions of this set. 

 

Another set that is related to the E94s is the M131 Baltimore News Newsboys set.  This set uses the same images and checklist as E94 but all the cards have the blue background.  They also have additional type on the reverses that say "The Baltimore News Newsboys Series" at the top.  Here are the four examples in the auction.  Click the image to enlarge it.

 

 

 

My favorite Ty Cobb card, the 1909 E102 Anonymous issue.  The pose with Cobb leaning on his bat and the striking background color make for and amazing card in my opinion.

 

 

Well, let's get to the more common (or not really) T206s.  First up would be a couple southern leaguer Dutch Revelle cards that would be a great start to a back run for someone.  First, the blank back example.

 

 

Then the uber rare Brown Old Mill example.  What?!  Talk about a rare card.

 

 

Also, one of my favorite HOF poses is the Clarke Griffith with bat and this particular example has the rare Cycle 460 back.  This back seems to be a bit more rare than it is given credit for at the present time.  And I happen to like it quite a bit. 

 

 

Last but not least are a couple of my favorite Zeenut cards.  First is a very historically important and rare card of Jimmy Claxton.  This 1916 Zeenut is the first American issued baseball card featuring a black player.  It was a great timing of events that resulted in the issuing of this card as Jimmy was only with the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League for one week in 1916.  That week just happened to be the week that the Zeenut photographer was with the team taking pictures and he got a shot of Claxton that eventually made it on the featured card.  This is not the most well known card in the hobby, but has great significance making it a favorite of mine.

 

 

The next Zeenut that is one of my favorites is the 1922 card of legendary athlete Jim Thorpe.  This is one of only a few cards of Thorpe from his playing days and his only card featuring him in the Pacific Coast League.  He is pictured with the Portland Beavers. 

 

 

Well, there you have it folks.  Some of my pics to showcase some of my favorite cards in the current REA Spring auction.  Here is a link to the auction so you can peruse the offerings yourself.  REA Link.  I highly recommend taking a look at the auction, even if you don't plan to bid you'll see some amazing items.  Now, I just focused on the cards portion of the auction, but there is amazing memorabilia as well if you're into that stuff. 

 

Let me know what your favorites are.  I'd be interested to see what I missed.

 

Enjoy the hobby all...it's an amazing one.















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.

T206 Horizontal Subset

When I first started getting into prewar cards, I was naturally drawn to the T206 set for it's colorful lithography, the shear size of the set and it's availability.

After beginning to learn about the set and after looking at hundreds of images of different cards, I found that I was very much drawn to the horizontal poses in the set. I found out that there are 6 cards in the set in a horizontal format. They are: Birmingham, Mullin, Murphy, Pattee, Pelty and Powell. I decided rather quickly that I wanted to obtain this subset of six cards.


I found that there seemed to be a little premium attached to them and I figured there were just a lot of other collectors that had the same goal as I did. That didn't surprise. I later found out that not only is the Pattee a very attractive card (which I had always thought was why it costs a bit more than the others) but it is also from the 150 subjects only group. The Pelty card is also from this group. Cards from this group, which consists of only 11 (possibly 12) cards from the entire set, are a bit tougher to find than the other cards.

Of note, the Pattee card is theorized to have been omitted from the set after the first series because his last year in the majors was 1908. I must say, this sounds like a pretty good theory to me. What a nice image though, one of my favorites in the entire set. (Another of my favorites from the set, coincidentally, is the Mike Powers card which is also a 150-only card).

I was finally able to complete this little subset a little over a year ago. Of course, I could have done it much quicker, but I kept wanting to pick up different cards and so I added a new one every now and then. I do love seeing all six of them together and thought you might like to see them as well.

Thanks for sharing these with me everyone. Enjoy the hobby everyone, it's a good one...