Diamond Dust punchboards - to punch or not to punch?

[JoeDfan]

Recently I acquired a Diamond Dust punchboard. In my standard catalog, it lists the year as 1940. However, NONE of the players listed on the punchboard match the list. Mine seems to be much earlier, with players like Babe Ruth, Speaker, Johnson, Alexander, and Hornsby.
It appears completely intact.

So the question is, do I punch them out, or leave it intact?

Other questions are: Does anyone have any experience with these, and if I punch them, how many baseball cards am I likely to find? Are they very rare?

Thanks in advance for your opinion.
Sean

[Exhibitman]

There are many variation of these boards. I have never seen a card from any I've owned. One thing to recall is that the cards are rolled, not folded then rolled, so the board has to be thick enough to accommodate a card rolled the short way. If your board is under an inch thick, don't punch it--there are no cards, just slips of numbered paper.

if anyone has a verified board from which a card has been extracted I'd love to see it and find out its dimensions.

[Butch7999]

Hi Sean, we're not terribly expert on punchboards, and we're not entirely sure how serious all your questions are, but...
There are at least five known varieties of punchboards with the Diamond Dust title, three of those with the "5c a Sale" notation.
As far as we know, the "1940" attribution is just an approximation -- all five versions date from somewhere in the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s.
This particular version is fairly tough, but doesn't seem especially rare.
A pristine, unpunched board always has much better eye appeal in our opinion.
Of course, you won't find any baseball cards in any process of punching out the board, if that was a serious question.
The shopkeeper who had a board like this one on display paid a relative pittance for X number of punchboards,
and stood to make about eight bucks in profit per board after all the winning numbers had been punched and paid out.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Butch7999

Hi Sean, we're not terribly expert on punchboards, and we're not entirely sure how serious all your questions are, but...
There are at least five known varieties of punchboards with the Diamond Dust title, three of those with the "5c a Sale" notation.
As far as we know, the "1940" attribution is just an approximation -- all five versions date from somewhere in the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s.
This particular version is fairly tough, but doesn't seem especially rare.
A pristine, unpunched board always has much better eye appeal in our opinion.
Of course, you won't find any baseball cards in any process of punching out the board, if that was a serious question.
The shopkeeper who had a board like this one on display paid a relative pittance for X number of punchboards,
and stood to make about eight bucks in profit per board after all the winning numbers had been punched and paid out.

What is in the punch out holes?

[JoeDfan]

Originally Posted by Butch7999

Hi Sean, we're not terribly expert on punchboards, and we're not entirely sure how serious all your questions are, but...
There are at least five known varieties of punchboards with the Diamond Dust title, three of those with the "5c a Sale" notation.
As far as we know, the "1940" attribution is just an approximation -- all five versions date from somewhere in the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s.
This particular version is fairly tough, but doesn't seem especially rare.
A pristine, unpunched board always has much better eye appeal in our opinion.
Of course, you won't find any baseball cards in any process of punching out the board, if that was a serious question.
The shopkeeper who had a board like this one on display paid a relative pittance for X number of punchboards,
and stood to make about eight bucks in profit per board after all the winning numbers had been punched and paid out.

So where do the little baseball cards come from, if they are not in the board? I actually have 3 of the Diamond Dust cards in my collection. Did the storekeeper trade them for some winning (or losing) number or something?
Yes, it was a serious question. I think I can open the back paper and extract the card without ruining the front. I am particularly leaning towards opening the back, if there is a significant number of baseball guys inside (like Babe Ruth!), but if there is nothing inside, I will leave it as is.

Thanks for your help!
Sean

[Butch7999]

The punched-out holes should reveal a number, and if the number matches that of one of those shown in the pay-out table,
the player receives that amount of money -- in Sean's punchboard above, for example, 12, 22, 62, 92, &c', each win a dollar
for the person playing, at the cost of a nickel per punch.

Many punchboards worked almost identically to that, while other punchboards cost different amounts to play
(usually a penny or a nickel per punch), paid out in different amounts for revealing a number or symbol, often paying out
not in cash but in candy bars or cigars or what have you.

We're not familiar with Diamond Dust baseball cards, so we can't even guess if they're related to the punchboards
(not saying they're not). But we've never seen a punchboard that either paid out in or contained baseball cards.

Again, this is a little outside of our wheelhouse, but someone on board here who has more hands-on experience
with punchboards should have better information. As always, we stand ready to be corrected.

[1880nonsports]

I'm sure he can speak for himself - but the OP is refering to small thin slips of paper like the ones you are referencing that contained numbers - only they depict a baseball player. They have been marketed to today's collector with the idea that these slips when punched were exchanged for one of the promoted prizes.
I'm not sure if the connection between the two has been confirmed with actual evidence or is just conjecture and caviar dreams. While I struggle with bouts of CRS I believe I've seen one in an sgc or psa holder; for whatever that's worth to one's acceptance or denial of the relationship. Like many ancillary issues - it seems these slips whatever their source acceptably stretch the boundaries of what defines a "card" for today's hobbiest.
Not my area of expertise although I have a few nice examples in my collection. I would never take a punch from a board that was complete - even if from the back. One that's been used is probably ripe for exploration of at least one punch............

no guarantees whether written or implied

[bnorth]

Here is a picture of a Diamond Dust Joe DiMaggio graded by SGC. It is the OP's card. I am sure I have seen others graded by SGC and raw ones on eBay.

[jerseygary]

Has anyone seen or owned a Babe Ruth? All the "cards" I have seen so far are of players from the late 1930's.

[Butch7999]

As stated, we're far from expert on these things, and honestly we'd be happy to learn that there were indeed cards
somewhere inside the punchboards or distributed in conjunction with them. But our guess -- only that, just a guess --
would have been that a card such as the one Ben shows is simply a cut-out (like notebook cut-outs, perhaps)
from the front of one of the many varieties of punchboards (granted, we've never seen that particular image
on any of the punchboards we've catalogued, but we're pretty sure we haven't catalogued all of them)...

[GehrigFan]

I've never heard of cards coming in the punch holes, either, but then again, I have no idea what else the DiMaggio "card" is that the OP pictured. That would be awesome if the cards really are rolled up inside.

Two things:

1) Not that is is easy to get access to one, but what if a person knew a doctor with an x-ray machine in his office. Would that reveal something inside of the holes underneath the metal punches?

2) If the OP DOES decide to punch the holes and find out, PLEASE do so on video and post the results for everyone to see. Even if there is nothing inside, if you punch out all the holes on camera, it owuld provide some strong evidence that there is nothing inside. And if you DID find something inside, there may be a little run on unused punch board games shortly thereafter :-)

Mark

[Exhibitman]

I'd love to get to the bottom of the origin of the set. The cards share images with the Salutations Exhibits from 1939-47. They are on paper that shows evidence of having been tightly folded and have numbers on the back [more on these below]. Here is a better view of one front:



They are not on the same paper as is on the front of the punchboard shown, though the design is the same.

Here is a small [6 x 8 x 1/2] DD board with a slip of paper I punched out of it. The paper was tightly folded into a small tubular shape as you can see from the ridges across its face. The big black number was meant to match with the three digit codes on the players depicted [this one #563 happened not to match a player; it was a losing punch]; the red numbers are the serial number of the board, so you could not stockpile old slips and switch them. I suspect that the reason there is a number on the back of my card is precisely that; it was a serial # of the board meant to tie the winning punch to the board so it could not be reused.



How thick is the punchboard with the cards depicted?

[GasHouseGang]

Couldn't that "card" just be hand-cut off the punch board? It sure looks a lot like those cards that are around the front of the second board shown.

[cincicards]

Here are a few boards that I had once upon a time, plus a couple of pages from a punchboard catalog and a card.

punch1.jpg punch2.jpg

punch3.jpg

cat1.jpg cat2.jpg

photo.JPG photo2.JPG

[JoeDfan]

My Joe DiMaggio SGC Authentic(?) card looks to be made of cigarette paper or something, and I can easily see where it might have been rolled up.
However, my card is 1" exactly in diameter, but the board is only 3/4" in diameter. I think for the moment, I will NOT punch it out; but if I change my mind, I promise that I will film the whole thing!
Thanks everyone for the information; although now I must admit, I am more curious about these cards then when I started!

[1880nonsports]

too big for the scanner

[edjs]

For what it is worth, the Standard Catalog says the 1940 Diamond Dust Punchboard cards were rolled up inside the punchboard. It has a nice description about the 1940 only, and mentions that earlier and later Diamond Dust punchboard cards are uncatalogued.

Ed

[Butch7999]

Was it Twain or was it Lincoln who said something like "Better to remain silent and be thought an idiot
than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt"... Kind of wishing now that we'd never piped up in this thread
and put our ignorance on display...
Randall's pic of the accordion-folded Newson has us all but convinced that once again we didn't know
what we were talking about -- couldn't see the folds in Ben's pic of the DiMaggio, but the two "cards" seem a match in format.
Couldn't imagine how there could've been much of anything inside the punch-out dots of a relatively thin, flat punchboard,
but we can kinda see now how a rolling-paper-thin "card" could be given an accordion fold and then rolled into
a tight little coil to be pushed out of the board.
We'll just add that unless Newson is one of the players listed on Adam's board, none of the punchboards we've ever seen,
including any of the Diamond Dust variations, features Newson among the players listed on the front, so it's possible
that the punched-out "cards" are included only in that yet-to-be-catalogued board.
We're gonna go sit in the corner now and shut up.

[Exhibitman]

I've never seen a punchboard confirmed to have the cards in it, but I am 100% convinced that the cards were accordion folded and placed into the boards to be punched out.

The Newson [sic; Newsom] is another that matches the 39-47 Exhibit Salutations, right down to the error, and is checklisted in the Standard Catalog. It also has the serial # and the code # on the back, just like my paper slip. Speaking of the Standard Catalog, I checked my 2013 Vintage version and it reports a 624-punch board as housing the cards. I assume that was based on something concrete? If so, we are looking for a big board at least 1.25" thick.

Butch, how thick is the board with the card images on it?

Here's a thought as to why cards: gambling laws. Some of the modern card companies defended 'chase' cards as not gambling on the basis that the base product in the pack was worth at least the cost of the pack. Perhaps the DD maker was trying that strategy to bypass anti-gambling laws, arguing that the cards were worth the price?

[Butch7999]

Hi Adam -- we're chiming in again only because you asked -- we don't have any of the boards shown in this thread,
and have been hands-on with only a few boards ever. The few we've handled didn't seem much thicker than
a heavy sheet of cardboard -- maybe 3/16" or so -- thus our initial skepticism that they could contain any sort of card.
But if the "cards" shown here are, if we infer correctly, about one inch in width, two inches high, then the accordion folds
they exhibit are no more than roughly 1/16". That inch-long, 1/16"-thick strip could be coiled into a tight circle
and placed inside the punch-out dots, therefore requiring no thickness of the punchboard greater than the circa 3/16"
that we've observed. And just from photo evidence, other boards are clearly thicker than that, maybe 3/8"-1/2".
We just took a look through our photo files, trying to locate any board with exactly 624 holes, but couldn't find one.
All the Diamond Dust versions we've seen have exactly 600.

[darkhorse9]

I don't know if it means anything, but those poses of the players on the bottom board are the same poses as the Salutation Exhibits series. I wonder if there's a connection.

[Exhibitman]

Butch, assuming it was accordion folded the card would still be 1" or so wide, so the depth of the tube would have to be an inch, making the board with the plies of tissue paper and drilled boards front and back about 1 1/4" thick overall. I have seen punch boards that thick, just not a DD one. If I had seen a DD of the right thickness I'd have purchased it and punched the stuffing out of it.

The connection with the Salutations is likely the firm that did the artwork for the cards reusing the art for these gambling tools.

[Butch7999]

Hi Adam -- just to clarify what we're vaguely theorizing, we can picture how the 1"x2" rolling-paper-thin card
would be accordion folded into a strip 1" wide by 1/16" high, then coiled up into a tight little circle, or spiral,
still just that 1/16" thick and about the diameter of one of the punch-holes. Since it was coiled, or rolled,
there would be no residual fold marks running vertically, and the punchboard would have to be only thick enough
to accommodate the 1/16" thickness of the coiled card. Again, just a guess, while noting again that
we were likely wrong about everything else on this topic from the get-go...

[Exhibitman]

I've been kicking around the DD card issue again with another member here. Since this thread was initially posted has anyone seen a punchboard with cards verified in it? As noted above it would have to be at least 1.25" deep to accommodate the cards. I've been searching eBay and every show I can find but haven't seen a candidate. As for the cards, here's an Averill that shows the borders and the numbers on the back:



The cards were definitely folded into little 'sticks' of paper and the numbers are consistent with the serial #/prize # scenario I suggested.

Here is a generic one that is 1.5" thick:

[Zan]

Thanks for reviving this. I am chasing the 1940 Hank Greenberg Diamond Dust punchboard card. In the Standard Catalog Lemke describes the cards being pushed out of the back of the board when a player pays the fee to play the game. What is interesting is that he detailed a checklist of dollar winner players and “consolation winners". He designated dollar winners in the checklist with an asterisk, all of which happen to match the player subjects of this board exactly.

I'm going to be punching the board later, because this is the closest I will be getting to the card, however it is the same one that Exhibitman punched above and did not get cards, so I am cautious.

[Exhibitman]

There are no cards in that board: they don't fit. You will get a plain slip of paper with numbers on it.

Look at the Grove and Newson cards: do you see a 727 or a 1468 on the list on the front of your board? Nope. But those are the actual card #s. Lemke [RIP] or whoever made the list likely took the front numbers on this common punchboard and used them as a checklist with no proof that they represent the actual 'innards' of the board itself. I've punched one of these small greenies and they don't have cards in them.

[Zan]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

There are no cards in that board: they don't fit. You will get a plain slip of paper with numbers on it.

In some way this board must be associated with the checklist in the Standard Catalog. The checklist matches all of the dollar winners, and all known auctions of the punchboard cards match the checklist

[Exhibitman]

You have it backwards: the checklist was created decades after the boards and was likely derived from a 624 hole punchboard the writer happened to see and described in the SCD listing. That is why the alleged SPs match the checklist.

The checklist is useless for your purposes because the cards cannot fit into your board. They are too wide. But please do punch out all 576 holes on your board and share the results here.

FWIW, the concept of SP in this set is irrelevant. The cards are almost never found, so they are all rare.

[Zan]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

The checklist is irrelevant; the cards cannot fit into the 3/4" thick board. They are too wide. But please do punch out all 576* holes and share the results here.

*The Standard Catalog listing describes it as a 624 hole board, not a 576 hole board.

There are 624 holes on my board. (12x13) x 4

[Exhibitman]

Great. Punch away and let us know what you find. Might make a good article for SCD.

[Exhibitman]

BTW, I feel like we shouldn't even be discussing cards in a thread on this board.

[Zan]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

BTW, I feel like we shouldn't even be discussing cards in a thread on this board.

I see what you did there

[Zan]

Punched 5 lines of holes. Just as you said, accordion-style paper with numbers.

Back to the drawing board.

[Exhibitman]

Sorry. I had hopes when I went through mine too.

[Zan]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Sorry. I had hopes when I went through mine too.

Everything just seemed to fall into place. I'll continue to keep my eye out for them. The answer is there somewhere

[Butch7999]

Maybe we're not understanding Brian / Zan's results correctly, but given that he did get accordion-folded slips of paper
(presumably coiled up to fit in the holes -- post #23), and given that the "cards" are also numbered (posts 14 and 24),
is it possible, just possible, that Zan's Diamond Dust board does have cards somewhere within it?
Maybe only one or two or, say, no more than a dozen holes contained cards... if all 624 holes of these popular boards
contained cards, we'd think more of the cards would have survived... please excuse us if that's an idiotic thought...

[Exhibitman]

Butch, they aren't in there. They can't be in there because they don't fit.

If it does not fit you must quit.

My guess is that the cards were in a very few thicker punchboards and were a short-lived effort to avoid the illegality of the name itself by claiming that every chance gets a prize so it isn't really gambling.

[Butch7999]

Right, Adam, we hear ya, but how thick do the punchboards have to be to hold a card, if the card is accordion-folded and then coiled?
About a sixteenth of an inch and change, no? Weren't the numbered slips you and Zan punched out of your boards coiled up
as well as first having been accordion-folded?

[Zan]

Originally Posted by Butch7999

Right, Adam, we hear ya, but how thick do the punchboards have to be to hold a card, if the card is accordion-folded and then coiled?
About a sixteenth of an inch and change, no? Weren't the numbered slips you and Zan punched out of your boards coiled up
as well as first having been accordion-folded?

No, just accordion folded. I would guess that the card would be 2x the width of the paper coming out of the punchboard

[Butch7999]

Ah. We stand enlightened, then, and shall say no more on this. Probably.

[Exhibitman]

There's no sign of secondary folding on these cards, just the horizontal rib looking folds from being accordion folded.