Essential Reading on Vintage Cards, Early Baseball, etc.?

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Posted By: Gary B.

What would you consider to be essential reading on vintage cards and pre-war baseball? I would like to become more knowledgable, and people here seem to often be referring to books I haven't read, or for the most part even heard of? What books would give one a good working knowledge of pre-war baseball and vintage card collecting?

Thanks,
Gary

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Posted By: Chris (the illini)

Lew Lipset's Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards is an excellent source of information on vintage cards. Its about 20 years old, but it still has a ton of useful information. Copies of it appear on ebay fairly often.

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Posted By: Greg Ecklund

For a book strictly on pre-war cards, the only one I can think of is Classic Baseball Cards: The Golden Years: 1886-1956 (by Frank Slocum). Doesn't have a ton of information on the sets, but it has every card from a great deal of classic sets pictured from 19th century and T206 all the way to 1955 Bowman. The 2004 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards is also essential.

Here are some books on players and events from the era that I would recommend:

The Glory of Their Times - by Lawrence Ritter

The Black Prince of Baseball: Hal Chase and the Mythology of Baseball - by Donald Dewey, Nicholas Acocella

The Pitch That Killed - by Mike Sowell

July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall of Famer Big Ed Delahanty - by Mike Sowell

Indian Summer: The Tragic Story of Louis Francis Sockalexis, the First Native American in Major League Baseball - by Brian McDonald

Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train - by Henry W. Thomas

Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth to Modern Baseball - by Burt Solomon

The Ginger Kid: The Buck Weaver Story - by Irving M. Stein

Eight Men Out : The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series - by Eliot Asinof

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Posted By: leon

Lew Lipset's Encyclopedia of Baseball cards (all 3 volumes, usually combined) and the latest Krause SCD are the absolutes.....a subsription to Old Cardboard Magazine would be my 3rd choice and I am eagerly awaiting the first issue........ and VCBC is essential too, ya just never know what they are doing or when they are shipping....(that has to be the worst run magazine in history that hasn't gone bankrupt)........later

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Posted By: warshawlaw

A great piece of investigative journalism written by Pete Williams (McMillan; 1995), who was (is?) a USA Today Baseball Weekly writer. Look for it on Amazon. The book chronicles the rise of card collecting specifically focusing on the Upper Deck company and the seamy side of its dealings. He does a very good job of tracing the history of card collecting up to 1980 and a tremendous job of explaining what happened when the hobby exploded into prominence. Just about the best thing out there when it comes to understanding the business of cards as it presently exists. Of course, it was written just before the internet revolution, so it doesn't cover ebay, but the rest of it is painfully dead-on.