Hobby history: 1946 Trading Post article on baseball cards

[trdcrdkid]

Here's a little hobby history item that I hadn't noticed before. The Sports Exchange Trading Post, a monthly sports paper published from 1945 to January 1950, had a fair amount of material about collecting sports items, and thus counts as an early hobby publication. I've posted some things from it, such as Buck Barker's 1949 columns on baseball card collecting (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=222057). One column that appeared fairly regularly was "Candid Shots (Taken From The Collector's Angle)" by Harold L. Esch, a sportswriter who would become a prominent card collector in later decades. In the September 1, 1946 issue of Sports Exchange Trading Post, Esch wrote about "Gum Cards", presenting them as exotic and "unobtainable" since none had been produced since before the war. He describes the most prominent sets of the 1930s and cites Wirt Gammon's article on cigarette cards from the January 11, 1945 Sporting News, which I posted here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=238775. Esch expresses a hope that gum cards might make a comeback, which they would not do until two years later.

Nothing all that exciting, but an interesting window into baseball card collecting as it existed right after World War II.

[Leon]

Great read. Thanks for posting it.
It seems the author didn't know about E cards whatsoever. This article would have been before the first ACC but after Burdick's original effort, The United States Card Collectors Catalog. We have come a far ways but I think there is quite a bit further to go.

[barrysloate]

What did he mean when he said the 1933 series was expanded to include 312 cards? What were the extra 72 cards he assumed were part of the Goudey set?

On reflection, I believe he is including the 1938 set because it did have backs and numbering similar to the 33's. But a little research would have told him that, for example, Joe DiMaggio was not around in 1933.

[nolemmings]

The 1938 Goudey set is as the author described, starts its numbering at 241 and advertises (in the second series) a total of 312 cards, so for whatever reason he feels the entire grouping is attributed to 1933. Just as incorrectly he claims the '34 Goudey set as having around 300 cards--where he gets this I do not know, and he neglects to mention the Chuck Klein footer on the last cards in the set. Oh well, i appreciate the effort.

[brianp-beme]

Thanks for posting. Definitely the information in the article is not very accurate...interesting that only 5 to 13 years after the cards were issued that the author got wrong so much of the basic facts of the sets.

Brian

[trdcrdkid]

Yeah, it is interesting that the info in the article is so inaccurate, so soon after the cards were issued. There were a small handful of advanced collectors (Burdick, Carter, etc.) who knew the correct details about those 1933-41 gum sets, but beyond that it seems that there was very little accurate knowledge, even in the leading sports collecting publication of the time.