Al Moore shares his stuff

A gray late-winter's day was brightened recently with the arrival of a Priority Mail envelope from Maryland collector Al Moore. The package contained a dozen or so color photocopies of items from his baseball card and memorabilia collection that he wanted to share with collectors via the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. Al is an old-school collector, and doesn't do scans or e-mail, so this a most welcome throw back to the heyday of my work on the big book.


There were some additions to existing checklists, such as Dave Duncan and Paul Blair in the 1976 English's Chicken bucket lids and Del Crandall to the 1953 Top Taste Bread Milwaukee Braves window posters.

There were a few items that we already have cataloged, but for which we lacked pictures. One of those was a Becker Bros. Theatre cards of Jimmy Dykes. This was especially welcome because the advertising on the back of the card allows us to correct the guesstimate of the date of issue from 1930 to a confirmed 1929.

Also in the package were several items that probably won't make it into the catalog, but are worth sharing with you as time permits, just because they're interesting vintage collectibles and because it is so easy to do in a forum such as this.

Al also sent information and a full checklist (49 cards!) for an obscure 1960 Baltimore Orioles issue. We'll be working that up for a presentation in the near future.

Best of all, Al says he will be putting together another package of the really rare stuff for future use. Watch this space in coming days and weeks for some really neat ol' stuff.

By taking the time and making the effort to share this stuff with you in this venue, Al represents the spirit of the hobby the way it should be -- collectors helping collectors.