Hobby supplies history

[steve B]

While not prewar, the topic came up in one of the Wagner threads and I figured this was a good time to expand on it a bit.

One poster mentioned Enor sheets as early as 1976, which sounds right.

I'll have to find them to check the maker but the oldest sheets I've seen were around in 1974 and were sold at K mart. There was an album with all 24 team logos on the cover as well.

Those pages were pretty bad. Sideloading, with the inner row loading on the right and the other two loading on the left. And very tight on size, barely enough room for a Topps card. Usually the inner row and the middle row would rub together.

Anyone know of earlier pages?

earliest toploaders?
screwdowns?

I may be a bit crazy, but I do keep a small collection of different holders, pages etc.

Steve B

[obcbobd]

Hi,

I still have one of those albums. 1974 sounds about right as I believe I had just started Jr High when they came out (or at least I noticed them). The pages were side loading and BARELY fit a Topps card. I think I may have even damaged a few cards trying to squeeze them in.

thanks

Bob

[oaks1912]

The small albums with team logos were sold at Toys R' Us and other stores around 1974 and were the first sheets, as I recall, that were designed just for baseball cards. They were produced by K & M Company in Southern California. Initially only 9 pocket side loaders were made for standard cards. Around a year or two later a collector from Tennessee (Gene Lebo) marketed plastic 'wall hangers' which fit 1950's cards. I think I still have one or two of those, but they were very impractical......... Prior to these 'card' sheets, I can recall using sheets / albums designed for photos which were sold at a local drug store. The cards slipped around like a nail in an otherwise empty Cracker Jack box.... It sure beat putting cards in those photo albums with the peel back plastic and adhesive lines which ruined many collections over the years...

[sirraffles]

Back in '76 I made the first acrylic cardholders. Also made the first injection molded holders around '83 or so.

[steve B]

The first acrylic - Were those the folded ones? I still have some of those. Very dependable holders, but they do flatten two corners after a couple decades. Our area had the originals and after about 6 months someone was making knockoffs that weren't finished as well.

Injection molded in 83? I'm trying to recall which those are. I have a few very old screwdowns some molded some just lexan with screws. I also have one from 82-3? Maybe earlier that was very advanced. It had a cardboard insert that had a nice pattern, and was a screwdown with nylon screws. The dealer I hung out at gave me the sample one he'd been sent. He never did carry them as they were really expensive and hardly any one said they'd buy them.

Steve B

[sirraffles]

Actually, the ones with the patterned cardboard insert and nylon screws came before the others. You are right, they were expensive. At first I packed them in individual boxes, then bags with a printed header. Of course, cards weren't worth all that much in the '70's and collectors had no experience with individual card holders. Oh, I can't count the times that I heard, "but that's as much as the card is worth!" I did end up selling maybe 30-40k of them over a few years. Next I did the fold overs, as a response to the price issue. I never did like them, in fact I hated them. I got out of making those as quickly as I could. Others started making them almost immediately and continued for some time.

The injection molded ones might have been a little earlier than '83. They snapped together and had a recessed spot for the card. I left enough space at the bottom for my "big idea"-hot stamping things like "Rookie Card" or "MVP". I sold quite a few of those.

By around '82 people had been making sheets for a long time but there was always a shortage as the hobby was growing quite quickly. I found an agent in Taiwan, at the time not an easy thing to do for a very small business, and imported a load of half a million sheets. They arrived in a cold December and were absolutely frozen solid. I had a huge pile of cases in the middle of the warehouse that took almost ten days to thaw out. You could see a really thick cloud of steam coming off them. Only in retrospect does it seem humorous to me...I'd invested almost all my cash into the scheme and had only a big pile of steaming .... to show for it. The sheets were forever damaged and were really, really terrible. I was going to throw them away but dealers were so desperate for sheets that they wanted them anyway. In the end I made a handsome profit selling frozen blocks of 100 sheets each. Those were the days!