What did I buy?
 

Top seller had this Billy Herman listed as 1940 topps. But I've never heard or seen anything like it before. Also sold were other cards in this series of Mickey Cochrane, Joe Damaggio, Van Mango and 2 others. Some blank backed or skinned, others seem to show that it cards were cuts from some kind of larger printed something. Any help appreciated.

The shape of it looks like popcorn holders they use at ballgames. I can't tell the size, but the material and printing doesn't look top quality. It almost looks like the quality you see in strip cards. I went and looked in David Hornish's history of Topps, and I saw no mention of any product that looks like your purchase.

1937 BF Unc felt pennant ?
 

This reminds me of something off an 1937 BF Unc felt pennant.

David

I wonder, since yours (and I assume the others) are pie shaped, and some had printing on back, that these were some sort of advertising display that had these pie shaped pieces in perhaps a semi-circle and were cut from the display. How thick is the paper/cardboard?

Brian

Funny, but by coincidence, a fellow unknown to us e-mailed us just yesterday asking about an obviously related piece
(him thinking it's a gamepiece from a tabletop baseball game, which it isn't). It looks to us like a cutout from a magazine
or newspaper, but he's sure it's not that either since he describes it as "heavy cardboard." Maybe cut from a notebook cover,
or from a box containing baseballs, a glove, a uniform, a jockstrap? You can get an idea of its size from the first photo...

Weird. I was going to say a popcorn box as well....one that was designed to disassemble and cut apart with each side having a different player, but now that I see it’s about 1.5”, I stumped. I do agree they look like they were attached at some point for some reason.

It's not 1940 Topps. Always glad to help.

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Mickey Cochrane was a catcher so my vote is a cutout from a jockstrap box.:cool:

The seller posted 6 players with this similar "heavy cardboard" medium. He is a large volume seller that labels everything as a "set break" so he most likely acquired these oddball cut-out pieces somewhere and didn't know what they were so he threw out "1940 Topps" to acquire clicks.

He also sold 2 Cuban/Mexican League cut-outs in the same timeframe and listed them as "1940 Topps" as well.

Obviously they are not Topps. Also consider the 6 players:

Mickey Cochrane - out of baseball by 1940, last year played 1937
Van Mungo - struggling with injuries by 1940, peaked pre-1937
Dick Bartell - played for the Tigers in 1940, his peak year was on the Giants in 1937
Billy Herman - still a star in 1940, but peak years were 1935-37
Hal Trosky - Played well in 1940 but peak years were 1934-1938
Joe DiMaggio - Rookie year was 1936, was already a star in 1937

So most likely we're looking at around 1936-37 era.

Consider the backs. 3 of them (Cochrane, DiMaggio, Trosky) have Art Deco lettering on them that looks like it forms OOK (Handbook? Blue Book? Scorebook?) and a 9 and 3 that would form a year 193?:

Attachment 456194Attachment 456195Attachment 456196

There are multiple sellers on eBay who acquire old baseball handbooks and cut out hardly seen photos of obscure teams/players and rebrand them as cards or rare photos.

If anyone can identify or find familiar the Art Deco lettering of the backs, you might find the cover that belongs to these cut-outs.

Card sold for Hal Trotskyist and Dick Bartell also. So that leads me to believe the offering for the set/group could be much larger. Not all stars the same year or from the same teams or league. They are printed on a card stock about same thickness as a T206 or program. Samples of other backs shown.

"I was going to say a popcorn box as well....one that was designed to disassemble and cut apart with each side having a different player, but now that I see it’s about 1.5”, I stumped."


Tiny popcorn box. Holds a single kernel. They're great if you're on a diet.

Maybe cut from an advertising piece for 1937 BF Unc pennants? I can not post the picture but there was a thread from 2009 where the pennants were discussed and Leon posted a full pennant of Lynwood Rowe.

The title of the thread was "Help identifying the BF issue" from Dan McKee.

Sounds pretty close. Here is what the scrap book looks like that these were cut from. The scrap book still doesn't explain where the images came from. There are plenty of publications you can grab for a few bucks loaded with images of Ruth, Dimaggio, Gehrig, etc.

Or the ultra rare jockstrap box theory might be right?

Incredible find! I knew someone out there would find that cover!

My guess now is someone back in the day made a scrapbook with cardboard pages in which one side they glued this World’s Fair cover on and the other side had these late 30s baseball images lined up. They were then cut individually and eventually made their way on eBay, marketed as “1940 Topps”.

Are we missing something, or have we not yet determined the actual original source of the little trapezoidal images?

Great detective work oldeboo. Net54 is the best.

Found a current thread with a photo of these cards as a part of 1937 BF-UNC Felt Pennant. Ctownboy was correct.