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Posted By: David Smith

Rick,

Forget insulation, they might have just been inserts with the HOUSE! The builder would build the house and insert the card somewhere and the owners would them have to try and find it, if they were so inclined. Most people back then didn't care so the cards just stayed where they were until later owners were doing renovations on the, now, old house.

To all,

All of this talk about cards falling out of walls and ceilings and being found in attics makes me want to go back to where my Grand-Mother was born and raised. She was born in 1920 on a small farm in Kentucky. Her family was poor and this place was in the sticks, as they say. I went there when I was about 10 or 11 years old.

At the time that I went there (in the late 1970's) the place was STILL out in the sticks and the house was abandoned. My Grand-Mother explained that when she was young, her family didn't have money for insulation so they used newspapers. Sure enough, inside the house, glued to the walls, were layers of newspapers.

When I went there, my Grand-Mother found a sports page and tore a story off for me. It had a headline and story about Babe Ruth hitting a Home Run and was dated in the late 1920's. I don't remember the exact details but it seems the Yankees were playing the A's that game. I don't have that piede of paper now because it eventually crumbled and turned to dust.

Anyway, I have sometimes wondered what else was glued to those walls or tucked inside of them? I didn't know it at the time but she said there was also a small attic in the house. Another member of our family went to the house at a later date and said there was still some stuff up in the attic when he cilmbed up there to look around. He said there wasn't anything valuable but, then again, he didn't collect cards or sports memorabilia and wasn't really into antiques.

David