1970 article on soaking T205s and T206s
 

Threads on soaking cards seem to pop up here (and be revived) with some regularity, so I thought people might find this interesting. I was looking through issues of "Ballcard Collector" from the early 70s, and on the front page of the November 1970 issue was an item by Dick Reuss about soaking 600 T205s and T206s out of an album he had bought for $10 (!). This was suggested to him by Frank Nagy, a very prominent collector of the time (as Reuss was). Reuss notes that he was skeptical at first, but that the soaking worked well for him. He notes at the end that while the colors didn't run on the T205s and T206s he soaked, "I wouldn't bet the same would hold true for all cards I know of", thus anticipating the Net54 threads about which cards are OK to soak.

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...60126_0002.jpg

boiling water...then stack them and bind them with a rubber band?????? boy has soaking evolved!!!!!

and at the convention there were 40 hardcore collectors ( of sports material not pornography) :)......

In SCD in the mid-70s, they reprinted a newspaper article about a guy who started a card shop, which was a novelty at the time. There was a picture of him smilingly sitting at a table, handling a bunch of stacks of cards bound by rubber bands! Aaaargh!

there was a dealer back in the nineties I'd see all the time at shows in the MD/DC/VA area...who had thousands of t206's all stacked and bound with some type of cord in his showcase. I never did make the effort to search through them...it seemed way too tedious at the time just to look for rare backs!!!!!

40 hard core collectors and "Some $1500 exchanged hands." Amazing!!

Bob Bostoff was the dealer. A great guy, no longer with us.

Loved the article. The Founding Fathers of our "Secret Soaking Society"!
Larry

RE: Bob Bostoff
 

I remember Bob. Bought a Mono from him for $5.00.

"Sorry, no Wagners, Planks, or other rare cards" --- :) --- Classic.

Today, I get all giddy if I find an unexpected Sovereign mixed in a lot :rolleyes:

"... or stick them in a hot oven"

This sounds like a plausible explanation for many of the T206s out there that have one or more crispy edges/brown burn marks. I have heard rumors of a card store that had a fire (with what must have been a gigantic inventory) but many soakers forgetting about the cards in the oven for a few extra minutes seems like a better explanation for a lot of these cards.

Edited to add: Thanks for posting this David, and all of the other old hobby stuff that you post. I don't always comment but I do always enjoy reading them.

on more than one occasion i got water inside the crystal of my watch...so i placed it in the toaster oven for a spell at low temp...voila...problem solved.

the next time this happened...I did the same thing...but forgot about it...left it in there for hours...the watch looked like a salvador dali image!

Thanks, Bryan. I'm never quite sure how many people are interested in this stuff, but I know there are at least some, so I'll keep posting it.

dick reuss - soaker article
 

trdrcrdkid

great article, thanks for posting.

author of the 1970 article dick reuss, long since departed, was a major collector. very smart guy and quite intense in his pursuit of cards. he had a real passion for bb history and the related cards. he was no novice when he wrote this article so the article clearly conveys the mentality toward condition at that moment in time ie rubber bands.

in the early and mid 70's very very FEW collectors had any interest in condition as it is currently in the hobby. the focus was on filling the missing number. if you had two cards in your paw at the same time you always kept the better one of course. cards were much harder to come by prior to the hotel convention buying trips of the mid 70's which unleashed the bulk of the pre 1960 cards that exist in the hobby today.

before the mid 70's hotel buying trips, cards were quite difficult to find even if you had a very fat wallet. so who cared about condition you just wanted to get the missing number in the set. rubber bands were what a LOT of people used. soaking was normal and widely understood.

the soaked cards would be a bit stiffer afterward from the drying process and sometimes a piece of the card would be removed with the album page as that glue stuck more in some places then others. most glue that held cards in albums was water soluble. but all told soaking was pretty successful.

the person that taught me to soak cards was/is one of the more prominent collectors of all time, and that is just what you did back then. (and evidently still many still soak cards when found in albums.)

all the best

Here's a profile of Dick Reuss that I found in the August 1972 The Trader Speaks:

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...60127_0003.jpg

in this picture of dick reuss, his hair is quite well tamed.

at the shows by the last day he had red hair that splayed out in all directions and i remember the distinct feeling that i was talking to the wild man of borneo! or a viking! a lot of people had their table to sell and trade cards all day saturday, stayed up talking cards till late in the morning then did the show sunday with a quite frenzied appearance.

in 1974 and 1975 era there were often just one show in a major city for the entire year, not one major show, ONE SHOW PERIOD, you had to make the most of your talking and trading time. sleep was not that important to some of us. most people did not travel to the few other cities holding shows so this one weekend was the only way you could get your fix of bb history.

dick reuss was very knowledgable and had a very major collection. dick reuss has long since passsed.

jsq

I see that Reuss was only 46 when he died in 1986. Sad. His papers are at Indiana University, where he taught in 1976, and they have a bio of him on the library's website:

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/find...InU-Ar-VAA1228