First Anniversary Post

Today is the one-year anniversary of when I started writing a blog dedicated to vintage sportscards. Over the span of 178 posts, I've helped share my love and passion about my hobby, shown off some of the cards in my collection, pimped my own website and helped answer some questions.

I've managed to keep this a regular blog, with 3 (and sometimes 4) posts every week, and hopefully I can keep up the pace with quality information. Here are some of the highlights of my first year:

 This Mickey Mantle card introduced my sometimes low-key collection.

I added this card to my Steelers collection after more than 10 years of it being on my wantlist.

I wrote two articles for hobby magazines. One on beaters, and the other on stadium memorabilia.

I began writing another blog covering the 1973 Topps baseball set.

A new variation was discovered in the 1965 Topps Transfers set.

I shared my recollections of the progress of my oldest card (Night Owl gave me that idea).

I got to write about what I call "The Book."

In the meantime, I've shared some new additions into my collection, I've provided glimpses into a number of classic vintage sets and have met some great hobbyists who share my passion -- some may call it "sickness" -- and even managed to share tips on storing 1951/'52 Bowman cards in a binder.

I was going to share my "Top 5" posts in popularity, but the numbers have been skewed by my method of giving generic names for the headlines. My most-read post is still racking up the hits, but it's not due to the subject matter...titled Pre-"Big Game" Post, it showed some 1952 Bowman football cards as a pre-Super Bowl entry, but the search engines sent me traffic from both fans looking for Super Bowl info and players of something called Game Post (I'm still getting several hits a week with that keyword). Likewise, another post mentioned eBay in the title and got 4 times the traffic I normally get in one day.

I can't close this entry without mentioning my regular readers. Some have given me topics (keep 'em coming), others have added valuable comments to fill in the many areas i am still unclear about, and still others have let me know via email that they learned something they never knew. You guys have no idea how much that means to a writer when he's told he's given a reader insight. I thank every one of you who've been along for the ride. Hopefully, it won't stop for a long time.

An Aura

Here's one of the 1934-'36 Batter Ups I have in my collection:

Card #74 -- Chick Fullis, Philadelphia Phillies

While some collectors have issues collecting these cards if they've been removed by their perforation, long-time readers know that I have no such aversion. However, it's interesting to point out that all six of the cards I own from this set are intact. Yes, they have scuffs (such as this one) and writing, but they're complete cards otherwise.

However, this card may pose a dilemma to collectors. It's intact, but it isn't for the condition-sensitive collector. There's a liquid stain on the back -- soda, perhaps -- that has seeped through the die-cut area to create a unique "aura" around the player.

A Word About Condition

One of the best things about having a blog and a hobby-based Web site is being able to help out other collectors. I enjoy getting email from somebody who has a card, but can't find any information about it. Recently, I have been able to identify 1961 Fleer, 1950-56 Callahan and 1939 Goudey premiums to collectors who were unable to figure out what they had.

On the other end of the spectrum are the more numerous emails from visitors who ask, "I have a 1954 Yogi Berra card. What is it worth?" or "I just found a Ray Sadecki Topps card. Could you give me a ballpark value on it?" Since I don't place values on my site and don't subscribe to any price guides, I'm not highly qualified to appraise anybody's cards; however, this type of email doesn't give me all the information I need to make an accurate guess in the first place.

There are a number of things that affect a card's value. The first and foremost is its condition. Common sense would indicate that a card with no flaws is desirable over one that has a crease or a bumped corner, but some collectors don't bother to read the condition guide found in all major price guides. It's safe to say that if your cards look like this:

(Actual scan sent from a Website visitor)

They aren't always going to fetch the prices that appear in the price guides.

One of the reasons vintage cards are so valuable today is because there are few that can be found in top condition (which is how they are valued in Beckett or the now-defunct Tuff Stuff). Once upon a time, kids pulled cards out of gum packs and tortured them to death. Cards were stored in back pockets, wrapped with rubber bands and tossed into shoeboxes, or were subjected to bicycle spokes and card-flipping contests, and many of those cards were roughed up. Over the past 30 years, however, more mature collectors have stored away new cards to protect against damage, and cards from 1980 or so are more likely to be found in higher grade. 

That's not to suggest that condition has only been important since around 1980. In 1939, Jefferson Burdick issued the first comprehensive guide to collectible cards, which we now know as the American Card Catalog. The ACC was more than a guide for baseball card collectors; in fact, cards of all subjects were listed, from baseball players to cards of birds, actors and flags.

On the subject of condition, Burdick wrote the following:

"Condition must be considered in pricing cards. Many are found with creases, tears, stains, tack holes, and other defacings to such an extent that they are almost valueless. The prices in this catalog are for specimens in good to perfect condition. As in all collecting, this is often a matter of personal opinion. Consequently, most collectors insist on seeing before valuing unless they are quite familiar with the seller's opinions on this point."

Remember, at that time, there were no dealers, card shops or monthly price guides. Serious collectors did most of their business through the U.S. mail and rarely met their fellow collectors in person. In that environment, trust was a key factor.

By 1983, Burdicks's concise wording had become somewhat skewed as the values grew with the hobby. Here's how a hobby guide from that era tackles the subject of grading:

"Each hobby has its own grading terminology...sports cards are no exception. The one invariable criterion for determining the value of a card is its condition: the better the condition of the card, the more valuable it is. However, condition grading is very subjective. Individual card dealers and collectors differ in the strictness of their grading, but the stated condition of a card should be determined without regard to whether it is being bought or sold.

"The physical defects which an individual places of a card are usually quite apparent, but each individual places his own estimate (negative value in this case) on these defects."

Somewhere along the way, some enterprising collector thought of making a grading standard. A third-party group could examine the card and determine its condition, and then place the card in a protective holder to keep that condition. By doing that, buyers and sellers no longer had to disagree over a card's condition (especially for cards where the difference in price between EX and NrMT could mean fifty dollars or more).  The idea caught on, and professionally-graded card services like PSA and SCG became established in the hobby.

Today's guides have a much more thorough definition of condition. One element that has become a large factor has been centering. When I began to follow the hobby in the 1980s, centering was mentioned only in regards to miscut or poorly cut cards. Today, Beckett specifies that a card must have no worse than 45/55 centering to qualify as Mint. As a result, you will notice that the card dealers who have been selling since the 1970s and 1980s have had a tendency to "overgrade" cards, because the requirements are so much more stringent.

On discussion boards, I have seen a number of collectors who only buy graded cards, and some have mentioned that they no longer buy raw cards because some sellers don't grade well. Personally, I welcome their decision; that means I won't have to compete with them on eBay when I bid on vintage lots. In my collection, the only time condition matters is when I have two cards and have to determine which one goes in the duplicates box.

P.S. In case you were wondering, here are some of the card values from the 1939 guide I mentioned earlier in the article:

2¢ Old Judge and 25¢ cabinets
10¢ Turkey Reds
3¢ Triple Folders
2¢ T205 and T206's (With no mention of Honus Wagner)
3¢ Cracker Jacks
2¢ Goudeys

Cool Vintage Card Videos

Occasionally on Fridays, I feature a "Q&A" section where I answer questions sent to me through my Vintage Baseball Cards website. Today's email is a little bit different:

"I came across your blog about the Topps '73 baseball cards. That's my favorite year.

Love your blog and appreciate the time that goes into it. I started using my old cards to do video blogs.  I've attached 2 of them, I thought you might enjoy them. I just wanted to drop you a line and tell you how much I dig what you're doing.  Keep up the good work."

The two videos he made show me he's a man after my own heart. First, here's the one he did with 1973 Topps cards:



Some of the cards he pointed out are also mentioned in my blog. I will eventually get to them all.

Here's the other one, which shows off more cards of Cliff Johnson than I realized he had (warning: one word may be considered offensive. So keep your speaker volume down if you're at work):



Great stuff.

Some More Info About 1948/'49 Leaf...

On Monday, I explained a little bit of detail about the 1948/'49 Leaf set and was quickly corrected on this point:

"In terms of scarcity, the short prints in the 1948/'49 Leaf set are almost as tough as 1952 Topps High numbers."

A buddy of mine named Ken let me know that it was his observation -- gleaned over 35 years of attending shows and trading with others -- that they short prints were much tougher than '52 Topps high numbers. So, I asked a bunch of other hobby friends what they thought. Almost everybody who responded agreed with Ken's assessment.

The issue isn't so much whether they're expensive as how hard they are to find. At major card shows, '52 Topps high numbers can be found easily if your pockets are deep enough. At the same time, collectors of Leaf cards must be more patient. They're just not there. In the major auction houses, there are almost always lots featuring high number '52 Topps cards, but that's not always the case with Leaf SPs.

In my own collection, I have two '52 Hi numbers, including this one I showed here last year:

Yes, it looks great. However, I picked it up cheaply because the back has major paper loss, so the number wasn't visible.

However, I have zero Leaf SPs. While that would lend credence to Ken's argument, I should also say I've never been crazy enough to try and chase Leaf SPs due to their prohibitive cost and none have somehow managed to find their way inside despite that. 

Unlike others, I'm definitely willing to admit when I've been wrong (just don't tell my wife. Seriously.). After all, this blog is devoted to informing hobbyists about older cards and I want it to be as accurate as I can make it.

The Set That Defied Conventions

Although World War Two ended before the 1945 World Series and most of the major leaguers who has been fighting the war were back on the field in '46, it took a couple of years for any national baseball card sets to appear. In 1946 and '47, there were many regional sets issued with loaves of bread, like Sunbeam, Homogenized and Tip Top. The period was a heyday for the Pacific Coast League; sets of its players showed up in loaves of bread (Remar), clothing stores (Smith's Clothing) and gas stations (Signal Oil). By 1948, the wartime restrictions on paper and printing had eased, supplies had built back up and the time had come to start printing baseball cards again for nationwide distribution.

During the 1948 season, Bowman issued a small set of black-and-white cards. Philadelphia Gum Company (better known for its mid-60s football sets) issued "Sports Thrills" cards along with its Swell brand gum, also a black-and-white set. By the end of the season, a new set was issued by the Leaf Company of Chicago (set description and checklist here). There were 98 cards in this new set.

Leaf's timing was unusual, because kids didn't tend to collect baseball cards after the season ended. Late fall is a time for football (in fact, both Leaf and Bowman were issuing football card sets at the same time as the baseball set). The set continued to be sold through the 1949 baseball season; this has led the set to be called "1948 Leaf" or "1949 Leaf," but most (myself included) refer to it as "1948/49 Leaf."

Leaf's was the first national baseball card set after the second World War to include color, by using black-and-white pictures and adding color by machine. The result isn't high-quality, however. The color on some cards is poorly done. Players' hats have too much color, their faces don't always match where the features are painted in, and many of the cards just look blurry. Likewise, the cards are printed on lesser-quality paper and cardboard, which makes collecting a high-grade set tough.

Cards have a couple of different background styles. This is found with a solid color background:

Card #73 -- Pat Seerey

This card, on the other hand uses two different background colors:

Card #47 -- George Vico

 There are a few cards that can be found with variations on their back colors, due to the haphazard print process Leaf used.

The 1948-49 Leaf set has been confounding collectors since the days they could still be purchased in gum packs. Despite the fact that the cards were issued at an unusual time, they were skip-numbered as well. The card numbers run between 1 and 168, and some card backs advertised an album that would hold 168 cards.  Adding to the frustration was the fact that exactly half of the 98 cards were severely short-printed. This was most likely designed to cause kids to spend a lot more pennies to get the non-existent cards. By the time the hobby was developing in the 1960s and 70s, collectors were still looking to find out whether Leaf had issued any more cards than 98.

Here's one of those second-series cards:

Card #63 -- Barney McCosky

For all its faults and shortcomings, the Leaf set had some things that Bowman didn't. Leaf actually had players' names on the front of its cards; Bowman copied the idea and added names to the cards in later series of its own 1949 set. Leaf also had cards of Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson, as well as Joe DiMaggio (who never appeared on a Bowman card at all). Babe Ruth has a card as well, probably as a tribute to him after his death in August, 1948. Another old-timer was then-coach of the Pirates, John (Honus) Wagner:

 Card #70 -- John (Honus) Wagner

The Wagner card is one that I like to show off because it raises a great question. Wagner is famous even to non-collectors as the subject of the most valuable baseball card in existence, and the story behind why that T206 card was limited is legendary. The legend states that Honus Wagner was anti-tobacco and didn't want the kids of America thinking he was endorsing cigarettes, so he had his card pulled from the set. I heard that story several times as a kid, but one day I saw his card from the Leaf set. It shows Wagner with a mouth full of chewing tobacco, which led me to the belief that Wagner wasn't as sensitive about kids' morals as he was about getting paid.

There are a couple of variations found in the Leaf set.  Most copies of card #102 show Gene Hermanski of the Brooklyn Dodgers, while a few spell his name as "Hermansk." Card #136 of Cliff Aberson shows the shortcomings of the machine-added coloring process. Most of Aberson's cards show him with a blue sleeve that is painted halfway down his arm:

Car #139 -- Cliff Aberson (short sleeve)

A scarcer variation features Aberson with a long sleeve.

Card #139 -- Cliff Aberson (long sleeve)

The last card of the set misspelled Phil Cavarretta's name as "Cavaretta," but this mistake was never corrected.

Inaccuracies can also be found on the backs of many players' cards. The card backs in the Leaf set follow a similar format of the 1948 and 1949 Bowman sets (which themselves were modeled after the backs of 1939-41 Play Ball cards). Along with a card number, the advertisement and the player's vital information (height, weight, etc.) was a paragraph outlining career highlights. The back of Ted Williams's card gave his age as 31, despite his being 30 until late in the '49 season and lists him as a right fielder instead of the left field position he actually played. Any inaccurate statements on the backs are made up by the sense of humor that comes from the writer. Phil Rizzuto's card states that he's "not much of a hitter," which was true; however, statements like that one just don't show up on cards today.

The short-printed cards make this one of the toughest postwar sets to complete, and few collectors even try to start on it. The high cost per card (especially for the short prints) are quite prohibitive for the budgets of some collectors. In terms of scarcity, the short prints in the 1948-49 Leaf set are almost as tough as much tougher than 1952 Topps high numbers. Short prints include the rookie cards of Hall of Famers Satchell Paige and Larry Doby, as well as key cards of Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, George Kell and Enos Slaughter. Thanks to the skip-numbering and the fact that the short-prints aren't consecutively numbered, a collector almost needs a detailed checklist to determine which cards are scarce.

For the record, here are the short prints: 5, 8, 13, 19, 20, 30, 33, 36, 43, 45, 48, 51, 54, 55, 62, 63, 66, 68, 75, 78, 81, 85, 88, 93, 98, 104, 108, 113, 120, 121, 123, 127, 129, 131, 133, 137, 138, 142, 143, 144, 146, 149, 153, 158, 160, 161, 163, 165, 168.

One of the web sites I often recommend to visitors of my Vintage Baseball Cards site is the Virtual card Collection, where cards for dozens of sets are featured. If you are interested in seeing the cards of the 1948-49 set, images of most can be found here. The print registration problems really show up on some of the cards there.

(Edited to add: a hobby buddy of mine has informed me that what I said about the scarcity of the SPs is erroneous. A little more dialogue with other collectors has confirmed it. I've fixed it and will explain the discussion in a future post.)

Q&A

Here's an email I received through my Website:

Q:  

"Was Andy Pafko such a great ballplayer?  He's not in the Hall of Fame, so why is his 1952 Topps card so expensive?"

 

A: 

Pafko was a capable fielder and dependable outfielder who played in the National League between 1943 and 1959. He was a five-time All-Star (1945, 47-50) and a lifetime .285 hitter. He came up to the majors and excelled at a time when many of the game's stars were serving in the military, but unlike many 4-F players of that era, he was good enough to stay in the majors once the stars returned from wartime duty. His career numbers aren't particularly impressive, and he has absolutely no chance of induction into the Hall of Fame. Cubs fans will point out that Pafko was one of the guys that took to the diamond the last time the Cubbies appeared in the World Series (in 1945). While the Cubs never returned to the Fall Classic, Pafko did three times -- with the Brooklyn Dodgers in '52 and in back-to-back seasons with the Milwaukee Braves ('57-'58).

The reason Pafko's '52 Topps card is so valuable is because of its position as the #1 card in the set. Back in the days before price guides and professional grading, most collectors really didn't pay attention to taking care of their cards. Many set builders would simply wrap their collections with a rubber band or two, and whatever card was at the top of the stack would get the most damage (the card at the bottom of the stack received most of its damage on the card back, so the damage wasn't as severe). Invariably, the card at the top was most likely card #1 of the set.

Another factor that affects the price of Pafko's card is the Brooklyn Dodgers logo. Collectors of 1948-57 baseball cards generally accept a higher price tag on player cards for all three New York City teams of the era, because those three teams (but especially the Yankees and Dodgers). In the realm of 1950s baseball cards, players like Charlie Silvera, Billy Cox and Clint Hartung have slightly higher card values simply because they played on New York City teams.

In terms of availability, Pafko's 1952 Topps card isn't any scarcer than any other card the the first series. Like all cards numbered 1-80 in the 1952 set, it can be found with either a black or red back. Its high price is not a result of scarcity.

The Pafko card isn't scarce; it's simply hard to find in top condition. It's commonly found with edge and corner wear, and if you don't have a problem with card condition, it won't cost you all that much to get.You just may have to be patient to find it at the right price, however.