Standard Catalog Update #18 : '77, '81 Variations

Variations that one collector may view as insignificant minutae may be viewed by another collector as a fresh challenge to completing a favorite-player collection, or an excuse to hunt down and build a parallel version of a favorite set.

In my role as one of the editors of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards I admit that I sometimes just shake my head and go ahead and add to the data base newly reported variations, even though I might not consider them to be a big deal. I've always espoused the philosophy that one of the best things about the baseball card hobby is that there is no "right" or "wrong" way to collect.

That said, I want to thank eagle-eyed New York collector William Lawrence for reporting and sending verification samples for two variations that affect entire sets.

1977 Topps Cloth Stickers


William reports that, as shown here, each of the 55 player stickers in the 1977 Topps cloth set can be found with either one or two asterisks at bottom preceding the copyright notice.

I'm guessing that both * and ** versions were printed on the same press sheet of 132 "cards" that would have yielded two complete sets and two rows of 11 double-prints.

It is unlikely that either version is numerically scarcer than the other, thus I wouldn't expect to see any price differential between them

1981 Permagraphic Super Stars Credit Cards

Another full-set variation reported appears in the lower-right corner of the backs of the 1981 Permagraphic Super Stars Credit Cards, in the area of the card numbers.

William points out that each card can be found with and without a "125-" appearing in front of the three-digit card number. He posits that since the corrected (uniform #29) version of the Rod Carew card is found only with the 125-022 number, and the error (uniform #20) with the 022 number, the 125- is indicative of a second, later printing. Sounds right to me.

On this variation, we'll note it in the set's introduction in the catalog, but will take a wait-and-see attitude about whether one or the other version will command a premium price.

As always, your own reports of variations -- accompanied by scans or returnable examples -- are welcome, but remember that my "official" position with the catalog is as vintage (pre-1981) editor, so things that happened much after that date aren't likely to get my priority attention.

My Newest Custom Card : Charley Pride

Here's my latest custom card creation. It's a 1954 Bowman-style card of country music legend Charley Pride as a pitcher for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. Ever since I learned that Pride had pitched for my home town minor league team, the Fond du Lac Panthers in the Class D Wisconsin State League in 1953, I've been interested in his professional baseball career.

When I found a nice black-and-white photo of Pride in his Memphis uniform in a book about the Negro Leagues, I knew someday I'd be making a card of him.

I'm going to walk you through some of the steps I took to make this card, in case you're interested in making your own custom cards.

I do two basic types of custom cards. The first is cards of players who were active in the year of the card's style, but who never appeared in that particular card set. For these I usually create the backs to read as they would have in the year of issue. The second style is to use card formats from the past, with modern players. All of my 110+ 1955 All-American style football cards are of this type. In this format I write the backs as up-to-date as possible.

My Charley Pride card is something of a hybrid. I chose a card format that was contemporary to his playing days (though no Negro Leaguers or minor leaguers appeared in the 1954 Bowman set), but wrote the back to present a complete summary of his baseball days . . . or at least as complete as you can be in about 150 words.

In the area where a player's previous season and lifetime stats would appear on as real '54 Bowman, I created a "Music Career Record" with such things as Billboard #1 Hits, Albums Sold, Grammys, major awards, etc. I would have used his baseball stats, but there aren't many of those available. The Negro Leagues didn't keep stats, and he never played on any minor league team in Organized Baseball long enough to have his stats recorded in league records, which usually only did so for players in 10 or more games.

I dithered quite a bit in choosing the card format to use. I strongly considered 1951 and 1952 Bowman, and 1953 and 1954 Topps before landing on 1954 Bowman. In colorizing the black-and-white photo, I kept the "look" of '54B in mind, minimizing a lot of the background details and muting the background colors. While I like the 1951 and 1952 Bowman formats, with their relatively clean front designs, and backs that are heavy on career summary and light on stats, their smaller size was a sticking point. For my custom cards I like to "go big or go home," except when the subject matter cries out for the smaller format. Too, the earlier Bowmans, along with the 1953 Topps, require more of an artwork look rather than a photograph. I use a dinosaur edition Photoshop Elements 2.0 graphics program, and I'm still learning how to give photos the look of a painting, so that is ultimately what caused me to reject those models. A 1954 Topps card was a distinct possibility. I could have used my full-length picture of Pride for the small image, and flopped the head-and-shoulders area for the color portrait. I even rounded up some cartoons to use on the back. I recently found a more close-up photo of Pride in uniform on his official website, and I may noodle around some with that 1954 Topps format, since I've already put in all the work on the biographical research. His web site, by the way, is where I found the autograph that appears on my card's front. Surprisingly, autograph images are surprisingly easy to find on the internet, and with a little bit of Photoshop work to give them cleaner edges, they can readily be used on custom cards.

That research was really one of my biggest hang-ups in doing a Charlie Pride card. So much of what you find in a google search is copied from source to source and, at least to my way of thinking, lacks credibility. For instance, both Pride's official web site and most other biographical citations on the internet give his year of birth as 1938. Since I know Pride was pitching professionally by 1953, that would mean he was a pro at age 15. While the Negro Leagues were known to have more than a few players in their mid-teens, I cannot reconcile the fact that he would have been able to sign a standard minor league baseball contract with not one, but two, teams at that age. Moreover, the SABR Minor League Data Base gives 1936 as his birth year, which seems to be more likely.

I just ordered a copy of his autobiography from Amazon (how do those sellers make a living selling used books for 40 cents plus $3.99 postage?). It will be interesting to see what details can be picked up from that first-hand source. If necessary, I can always issue a "corrected" version of my card.

While I greatly enjoy blogging and sharing my hobby interests, I'm not in love with this platform. It is very clumsy to insert decent sized pictures and you never know from the preview what the final product will look like when you hit the "Publish Post" button.

Because you probably won't be able to read my card back, I'll reproduce the text here:

Charley began playing pro ball with the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League -- at the age of 17! He played with the Louisville Clippers in 1954, until he was traded for a used team bus to the Birmingham Black Barons. He returned to the Red Sox in 1958 after two years in the Army. Charley traveled all over the U.S. (and Mexico) trying to get a start in Organized Baseball, making stops in Class C and D leagues with the Boise (Id.) Yankees and Fond du Lac (Wis.) Panthers in 9153, the Nogales (Mex.) Yacquis in 1955 and the Missoula (Mont.) Timberjacks in 1960. After hanging up his spikes he picked up the guitar with which he entertained teammates on long bus rides and made a (Country Music) Hall of Fame career for himself over the next three decades in Nashville.

According to the stats on the SABR site, Pride played in one game with the Boise Yankees, who were a Class C Pioneer League farm club for the N.Y. Yankees; no other stats are recorded. With Fond du Lac, once a Yankees farm, but unaffiliated in 1953, the final year for the Wisconsin State League, he had an 0-1 record in his two games. With Nogales in the Class C Arizona-Mexico League debut season of 1955, Pride had no record in two games, and was 0-for-2 at the plate. Missoula was a Cincinnati Reds' affiliate in the Pioneer League in 1960. He played in four games for the Timberjacks, with no won-loss record in seven innings over three games, in which he gave up eight hits and four walks with a 3.86 ERA. But he did bat .400 in five ABs.

Pride had an unsuccessful tryout with the California Angels organization in 1961 and when even the lowly expansion Mets refused to give him a look in 1962, he gave up his dream of playing big-league baseball.

For a number of years Charley worked out at spring training with the Texas Rangers (he's made his home in Dallas for many years), and when Major League Baseball did that dopey ceremonial draft of living former Negro Leaguers in June, 2008, he was picked by the Rangers (his brother Mack "The Knife" Pride was picked by Tampa).

Some day when I'm back visiting Fond du Lac, I'd like to read the old microfilm from 1953 to see what, if, anything, they had to say about Charley Pride. I can tell you this much, he is unlikely to have found FDL a very hospitable place. In 1953 he would have been one of exactly two Negroes in that east-central Wisconsin city of 30,000+ . . . but, that's a topic for another blog.

As always, you can find images of many of my custom card creations in the 1955 football, misc. football and baseball albums on Photobucket www.tinyurl.com/customcards.

Standard Catalog Update #17 : 1950s Mantle Decal

I don't know if this item will make it into print in the 2011 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, but at least it will be in the data base.


With space in the print edition at a premium, it is less likely with each passing year that an item that is not an actual baseball card, or very close to the traditional definition thereof, will be added. By getting such things into the data base, however, we can include them in any expanded DVD version of the book.

This decal, measuring about 2-1/4" square, has only recently begun to show up in any quantitiy in the market. I attribute this to the discovery of an original hoard, rather than modern fakery.

There no way to accurately date the release of the decal; the last half of the 1950s seems like a good bet.

Dairylea was a milk producers' co-operative organized before World War II in Orange County,
just north and west of the New York metropolitan area.

I've seen this decal being sold in slabs from both Beckett and SGC. Prices seem to vary from $90-200, but I'd bet they come down some as more of these make their way into the hobby.

Tales of T212 #7 : Paul Strand

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here.

Paul Strand was something of an N.L. Babe Ruth

There were a number of similarities between Paul Strand and Babe Ruth. They were both left-handed pitchers who hit so well that they were converted into outfielders and posted league leading numbers at the plate.

Strand was a Western boy, born in late 1893 at Carbonado, Wash. As a side-arming lefty, he made his professional debut at the age of 17 with Spokane in the Northwestern League. He had only a 5-9 record for the Indians, batting .212, but he earned a spot on the checklist for the final year of Obak's cigarette card issues out West. He also earned the interest of big league scouts, and the Boston Red Sox bought his contract for $5,000.

The Red Sox turned him back to Spokane where he opened the 1912 season. After getting shelled for nine runs in one inning, he was sent down to the new Class D Tri-State Western League. Following the 1912 season he was drafted by the Boston Braves.

Strand pitched sporadically for three seasons for the Braves, with a 7-3 record and a 2.37 ERA. He was on the "Miracle Braves" team of 1914 that wonthe World Series, but Strand never got into the post-season action because the Braves used only three pitchers in sweeping the Athletics.

At the start of the 1916 season, Strand was sold to Toledo on the American Association, where he continued his conversion from the mount to the outfield. He hit only .215 and returned to the West Coast in 1917 with Seattle in the NWL. That season he pitched a perfect game on May 13 against his old team, Spokane. He had a winning season, 9-7, and raised his BA to .285.

Strand spent 1918 in military service during World War I. When he returned to pro ball in 1919 it was with Peoria in the Class B Three-I League. He hit .299 for the "Tractors," then finished the season up a grade at Class A Joplin, where he batted .386 in 17 games.

He split 1920 out West again, leading the Pacficic Coast International League (Class B) with a .339 average at Yakima, before moving up to the Pacific Coast League with Seattle, by now afull-time outfielder.

Moving inland to the Salt Lake City Bees for the next three years, Strand really hit his stride at the plate. After a .314 year in 1921, he led the PCL in 1922 with a .384 BA and 28 home runs. He also set a professional baseball record with 289 hits -- but remember, the PCL played nearly 200 games a season back then.

Strand broke his own hits-in-a-seaon record the following year, with 325 safeties on his way to the PCL triple crown, also leading the league with 43 home runs, 187 RBI and a .394 average. His 180 runs scored were also league-best.

Those numbers earned Strand another shot in the majors at the age of 30 when Connie Mack bought him for a figure variously reported at $35,000 or $50,000, and three players. With the Philadelphia A's for only a couple of months, and hitting only .228, he was sold to Toledo.

Strand continued to dominate pitchers in the high minors for the next three years. He finished 1924 with a .355 average for Toledo, and hit an even .300 in 1925. Moving to Columbus (Amer. Assn.) for 1926, he hit .335 before returning to the West Coast with Portland of the PCL, hitting .326. He remained with Portland for 1927, hitting .355.

At the aqe of 34, Strand wrapped up his pro career in the Southern Association in 1928, batting .273 for Atlanta and Little Rock.

In 14 minor league seasons, Paul Strand played in 1,561 games and had a career batting average of .334. He died in Salt Lake City in 1974 at the age of 80. Since his major league career began after the golden age of cigarette cards, he never appeared as a major leaguer on a baseball card, though he appeared in a number of card sets during his PCL days, including the popular Zeenuts candy issues of 1922, 1923 and 1927.

Standard Catalog Update #16 : 1949 Page's Milk

While the Page's Pittsburgh Milk Co. card set has been "cataloged" for more than 35 years -- in the sense that it was listed in the old Sports Collector's Bible -- we were never able to pin down the details for an updated listing in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.

That has changed with information provided by Texas type-card specialist Leon Luckey, who recently published on his vintage baseball card forum, Net 54 (http://www.net54baseball.com/, the definitive on-line community for serious pre-war card collectors) an example of the Page's milk card. More importantly, he also published the "offer card" that was issued with the cards to explain the promotion 60 years ago.

Many collectors will recognize the Page's milk card as a parallel of the set best known in the hobby as 1947 Bond Bread. In reality, both sets are part of a line-up of collectibles featuring the same photos in a variety of formats. There are 2-1/4" x 3-3/8" round-cornered cards (44 baseball, four boxers), 2-1/4" x 3-1/2" square-cornered cards with white/gray backs (same 44 baseball players and four boxers), 2-1/4" x 3-1/2" square-cornered cards with beige backs (22 baseball players, two boxers[and recent, circa 2000, counterfeits thereof]), 3-3/8" x 5-3/8" exhibit-size (45 baseball players), 3" x 5" (presumably 45 baseball players), 6-5/8" x 9" photographic premiums (44 baseball players, four boxers) and perforated, two-sided 2-1/4" x 3-1/2" (22 baseball players, two boxers, with western movie stars on the other side).

We know these collectibles are all related because they share the same photos and script-name identifications on the front, including a few misspellings: "Bobbie Doerr, Cid Gordon, Larry Janson, Johnny Vandermeer."

A great deal about these cards remains unknown, and what is known is clouded by rumor and misinformation.

All have some connection with the Harry M. Stevens Co., of New York, the major producer of baseball year books and concession stand player picture packs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is likely Stevens was the source of the photos used on the cards and premiums.

It is likely that at least the 2-1/4" x 3-3/8" (and 3-1/2") cards, whether round- or square-cornered were actually manufactured by Aarco Playing Card Co., Chicago. Aarco was, in the late 1940s, the second- or third-largest manufacturer of playingcards in the U.S. They had been in business since at least 1938 and were sold to the industry leader, United States Playing Card Co., Cincinnati, in 1987.

From the player selection and uniforms, it is evident the first of the baseball cards were produced in 1947, when anecdotal evidence shows the round-cornered cards were inserted into loaves of Bond Bread, a national brand that was sold around the country in about the same geographical area in which major league baseball was played at the time. This version was designated D305 in Jefferson Burdick's American Card Catalog.

Contemporaneously, or perhaps a year or two later, the square-cornered versions of the cards were being sold in four boxed series of 12 cards each, labeled "Sport Star Subjects." This version is labeled W571 in the ACC.

In 1974, just over 3,000 sets of two of these square-cornered series were found in a warehouse and sold into the hobby. There is much disagreement as to whether these warehouse-find cards were from the same printing as the boxed-set issue, or were a later reprinting. Regardless, the end result was that half of the square-cornered cards are now much more common than the others. And don't even get me started about the recent counterfeits of those 24 cards. Aarco also produced other small boxed sets of similarly formatted cards of movie stars and other athletes, with the small boxes labeled "Collectors & Traders."

In 1949, the round-cornered cards, all 48 of them, were used in another promotion, this time by Page's Pittsburgh Milk Co. (presumably proximate to Pittsburgh, Pa.) As can be seen on the offer card distributed with the player cards, a complete set of the cards bearing the Page's rubber-stamped printing on back (which is known in both purple and black ink) could be redeemed for a high-end bicycle. It should also be assumed that to avoid giving away too many bicycles, one of the 48 ballplayer/boxer cards was intentionally distributed in short supply. However, since surviving Page's-backed cards are so rare, we'll probably never know which was the short-printed card.

We will be adding the Page's Pittsbugh Milk Co. set to the 2011 Standard Catalog. Perhaps my then we'll have taken the time and made the effort to reorganize the other related issues that are, in conformity with current hobby practice, lumped together as Bond Bread issues.

Standard Catalog Update #15 : W514 H.A. Robinson

Last time around we presented a couple of previously uncataloged (at least by us) advertising-back versions of W514. Here's the third ad-back version, as promised.
This type of ad-back W514 is known in within the hobby in only one, or possibly two, surviving examples. Fortunately for the card's owner, veteran W514 collector Bob Zych of New York, the player on the front of this card is Black Sox pitcher Ed Cicotte. This card bears on its back the advertising of a Lynchburg, Va., peanut company, H.A. Robinson.

Perhaps it is because this virtually unknown back is found on a Black Sox card, but there are those in the vintage card community who are not convinced this is a legitimate, circa early-1920s, overprint.

I am on the fence, but leaning towards legitimate, for the following reasons . . .

• The lack of specimens in the makretplace argues against someone having contrived this variation to cheat collectors. Granted, the pictured example has only recently been made public, and if it is a fake, the maker could be waiting for hobby buzz to develop before cashing in by leaking his other creations into the market.
  
• The subject matter of the ad-back is rather mundane. A con man might be inclined, if he was going to fake an ad-back, to go with a better-known brand name, a more glamorous type of product, or a more exotic location for the issuer.
  
• The details of the advertising are, with a little work, verifiable. There was an H.A. Robinson peanute company located in Lynchburg in the past. Two brands of five-cent peanut packages are mentioned on the card, "Our Hero" and "Robinson Cruso" (it was not unusual to spell the surname without an "e" in times past). A good guess would be that one baseball card was packaged with each peanut purchase, and the Cicotte card certainly shows evidence of having come into contact with some sort of greasy substance.
  

If the Robinson Cruso brand rings a bell, it might be becuase the brand still exists today as Robinson Crusoe (now with an "e") Salted Home-style Virginia Peanuts, and was on the list of peanut products recalled in the salmonella scare earlier this year. The brand is now the property of Peanut Corporation of America, which is in bankruptcy and the subject of numerous pending criminal and civil investigations as a result of it being "ground zero" for the salmonella outbreak.

Besides the aforementioned appearance on a "star" card that is so low-grade as to not risk losing much value if it was proven to be phony, the nagging doubt I can't quite shake is that there is a decided lack of corroborative, verifiably vintage, advertising for the two named peanut brands. A company that went to the trouble to create baseball cards to promote its product was certainly savvy enough to have used other types of promotions and premiums, yet these are not to be found by the casual researcher.

Here is where I'm currently at in terms of listing this set in the Standard Catalog . . .

I will withhold such "sanctification" unless or until more definitive proof of legitimacy is forthcoming. This could be accomplished by my having the opportunity to microscopically examine the subject card, or preferably more than one, to determine whether the advertising on back was printed before or after the card was circulated.

Listing a card or a set in the hobby's premier reference book is a bell that can't be unrung. Even if it was listed, then taken out if/when evidence was forthcoming that it was not legitimate, much damage to the hobby's body of knowledge would have been done.

Obviously, if you can provide any new information, or samples for study, contact me.

Standard Catalog Update #14 : Ad-back W514s

The 10-for-a-penny strip card set of the early 1920s that has become the most popular in the card hobby is the 120-card issue that was designated W514 by Jefferson Burdick in the American Card Catalog. The set was issued from 1919-1921, as evidenced by several team-change variations found on the cards.

The popularity probably stems from three principal attributes of the set: 1) At 120 cards it is large enough to include not only the top stars of the day, but also more of the journeyman ballplayers; 2) Among the color artwork genre of strip cards of the era, the images on W514 are, while by no means photorealistic, at least not cartoonish in their player depictions, and, 3) The set contains career-contemporary cards of seven of the "Eight Men Out" Black Sox, lacking only Fred McMullin for a complete rogue's gallery of those banned for life for throwing the 1919 World Series.

While not particularly rare, the W514 set is a challenge to complete, especially in anything approaching "investment" grade. The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards indicates that, at least theoretically, an outlay of about $30,000 would be required to acquire the set in Near Mint condition.

What are rare are W514s that, instead of the blank backs expected of strip card issues of that time, bear contemporary advertising from promotions-minded retailers or consumer goods manufacturers who saw the baseball cards as an inexpensive advertising vehicle, especially for products appealing to children. For a minimal investment in strips, or possibly uncut sheets, of the cards, they could be converted to colorful, collectible giveaways by a quick trip to whatever was the local equivalent of a Kinkos in the 1920s for a fast overprinting of the otherwise blank backs.

It is unknown whether the ad-backed W514s were issued when the cards were new, or whether the overprints were added later in the decade to allow local companies to compete with larger national or regional companies that had their own baseball cards.

For a number of years, a version of W514 that carries ads on back for Mother's Bread has been included in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. For the 2011 edition, two more such ad-back versions of W514 will be added to the "Big Book," with the possibility of a third also joining the line-up.

The first, and more common (if you can call five verified survivors "common") ad-back W514 was overprinted to promote the sales of Hendlers (no apostrophe on the cards) ice cream. Hendlers cards originated in the Baltimore area where their issuer, Hendler Creamery Co., sold ice cream from at least 1905 into the late 1960s. The creamery was one of Baltimore's most successful Jewish-owned businesses of the early 20th Century. The company was sold to Borden's prior to 1932.

The company's long-time slogan for its ice cream was, "The Velvet Kind," and that line appears on each of the handful of known Hendlers baseball cards. Each card also exhibits a second slogan. Those known so far are:

• A Pal For Your Palate



• A Smile Follows The Spoon



• In The Triple Sealed Package



• Melts In Your Mouth



• On Your Way Take Home A Bric

Naturally, if you can add to this list, please do so by sending a scan for verification. The Hendlers card pictured herewith is courtesy of Virginia collector Val Kehl.

The second type of ad-back W514 to be reported has on back an advertisement for Barker Bread. Specifically, all known examples have a three-line message: Safe at the Home Plate / Eat / Barker Bread.

Unlike the Hendlers cards, nothing is known definitively about the issuer of the Barker Bread version of W514. Period advertising exists for Barker Bread, a Santa Monica, Calif., baker, but it is not known whether this was the baseball card advertiser.

Veteran type card collectors indicate that examples of either of the overprinted W514s should easily support a multiplier of 6-8X the same player's card in the same condition from the "plain" W514 issue.

As always with overprinted cards, collectors should be especially cautious when contemplating purchase. With the proliferation of scanning and printing hardware available today, producing a bogus ad-back W514 would not be too great a challenge. It is helpful to closely examine such purported rarities to determine whether the overprint was applied before or after the card saw circulation.

That being said, next time out we will tackle a third type of overprinted, ad-back W514 . . . a type that by no means has universal agreement as to its authenticity.