Originally Posted by jsq
Pat Quinn, one of the smartest guys in the hobby and also one of the most knowledgable people in the hobby. Pat had some great stories about growing up on the south side of chitown. what Pat has not seen in the sports memorabilia field and cards probably ain't worth seeing.
Don had an awesome personal collection which i also personally held and perused. his wife Henny was a saint putting up with the collection/collectors. i ran into Henny many years later when i occasionally bounced back into the hobby to see old friends, Henny was a real quality human.
In 1974 or so took a friend over to see Don's collection and Don was not home. it was a saturday as i recall and don was out playing baseball appropriately enough. Henny just let us head to the basement where i showed my non collector friend what, at that time, was, and still would be one of the most comprehensive collections ever assembled. Dons collection was dispersed many years ago also as i recall after his unexpected passing. don had awesome runs of complete sets of nearly everything from 1933 forward issued by goudey, leaf, playball, bowman and topps, post cereal, bazooka, etc in addition to LOTS of complete sets from the e and t era. no lajoie, wagner or plank, when i saw his collection but he may have added them later. Don is long since passed. Don, like most collectors of that era was not a big condition fanatic. sure don upgraded haggy stuff and had huge volume go through his hands due to the hotel buying trips but he was not fanatical about condition as one of his partners, keasler was. also Don had even more complete sets of 1930's premiums and regionals from the 40's and 50's then keasler, which was saying a lot.
here again back to the topic of the existence of older cards that have not been altered. with don's cards, like all big time collectors of that era, it was all original stuff that he acquired directly from the original owner or the family of that owner, that rated vg to mt which don acquired as an adult collector. some of this stuff was acquired by the original collector and put in a box and never played with, thus pack fresh so to speak even 60 years later. other then the wagner, plank, and lajoie their was so little money in the rarest of cards that no one had an incentive to alter or play with the cards that were being acquired in the early and mid 70's.
a mint set of 52 topps walked into the philly show in 75 or 76 and went to auction and brought $1,000 at auction with a room full of collectors. gar, from nj bought that set.
i am not sure when don started collecting sets straight out of packs, if i was to guess mid 1950's aprox and after that date he of course would have awesome pack fresh condition because that was when i would guess he started opening packs for his own sets. once again the printing quality of cards from the 50's and 60's left something to be desired but their are collectors who assembled their sets from packs and never played with the cards. a lot of original quality older cards, got into advanced collectors hands.
fun memories of lots of cards, one neat aspect of the memory is when you went through another persons high end collection in the early and mid 70's, you were actually holding the cards, not a slab.
i have one card today in a slab, a slabbed card from the lionel carter collection and i think the slab is pretty neat in the respect that i can handle it with no concern of damaging the card.
i also have about 20 late 1960's yankees i found in an old scrapbook of mine haggy, but they were mine!
best of collecting,
jsq
|