Need help with 1936 and 1939 Goudey Premiums
 

Good morning, I have some questions but first off, a little background. My late grandpa was an avid collector of all sorts of sports memorabilia. Before he died he gave a lot of it out. He gave my brother and I a bunch of stuff in varying conditions. One of the things he gave us was two very old envelopes that mom kept hidden from us until we were adults. It turns out, each of those envelopes had near complete 1936 and 1939 Goudey Premium sets in them, unsleeved and untouched for decades.

It is pretty overwhelming to go through these so I was hoping that some people were would have have some knowledge on these older cards beyond the very basics I can find elsewhere.

They are very neat, and have a close personal story to me but I'm really not sure about a lot of things like:

1.) Should I grade them? How do you decide which ones to grade and not to grade? SGC vs. PSA? I do want to sell some but probably not all of them?

2.) What is the best way to preserve them?

3.) Does anybody just have advice or info on these sets or on vintage baseball cards period that would be helpful?

Please share your wisdom with me! I want to make sure I do things the right way. I have photo soft sleeves and top loaders on the way as a first step.

Congrats!
 

Wonderful and very valuable collection.

The williams is super sought after. Can you post some additional pics?

Here are a few more from the collection. If anybody wants to see close ups of any of the cards I'm happy to post more later after work. I only have a few on my phone right now and don't want to finger through them until the photo sleeves come in from Amazon today.

The one with DiMaggio and McCarthy is one of DiMaggios earliest cards. In fact, all 3 DiMaggios in the 1936 set are his earliest cards.

There’s another one of DiMaggio with a toothy grin and another one of him swinging his bat. Those along with the DiMaggio/McCarthy are his earliest cards.

Great cards. Definitely grade some of them. But mainly be super careful handling them. On a nr-mint to mint card the tiniest thing could bring it down many grades.

https://www.oldcardboard.com/r/r311/...?cardsetID=867
https://www.oldcardboard.com/r/r303/...?cardsetID=859

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Sadly the 1936 set is not complete and two of the missing cards are the other DiMaggios. I was happy to even see one though. The cards with two people on them in this set are really cool.

Thank you. I'm very nervous about transferring them to sleeves and top loaders but I'll try to be as careful as I can.

Wow! Great cards. Keep them in nice condition and they are worth a good amount of money. There are some real experts here so I’ll let them chime in. I’d like to see the envelopes they came in if you get a chance. Congrats!

I made a mistake, the one swinging a bat is a 1936 Chicle. The one with the toothy grin is a “ Wide-pen” Goudey Premium. But the with MCCarthy is one of his earlier cards and it pre-dates his Big-head card. Last time I looked a graded DiMaggio/McCarthy in poor condition sold for about $1000.

Yea I'm having a hard time figuring out what this would grade. Some slight corner issues but the rest of the card is really crisp. Slight edge imperfection on the top middle.

Need to get it to somebody qualified to give me a more informed opinion.

Sad day. Upon closer inspection my DiMaggio and Mccarthy has this slight cracking when viewed under intense light from the right angle.