COOL FIND: 1948 Vis-Ed "Big League Viewer" & tons of associated material

[rhettyeakley]

I know this "set" is from just after WW2 and should probably go in the postwar section but I thought there would be some interest from the board so I apologize for the slightly O/T nature of this thread.

Anyways, the 1949 Vis-Ed Cleveland Indians items are tough to find, but even tougher are the rare 1948 Signal Oil "cards" (actually a piece of film tucked onto a card) featuring Los Angeles and Hollywood P.C.L. players...


I recently picked up an amazing little group of these cards and a ton of the "associated stuff" such as advertising, etc. to go along with it...


Included in the lot was the viewer and the box, the nicest example of the box I have ever seen...


It came with the cards pictured above, a slide of the Hollywwod Stars, and two copies of a Babe Ruth/William Bendix slide from the movie "The Babe Ruth Story". I have owned copies of the Babe Ruth slide before and never put 2 and 2 together to associate that slide with the Vis-Ed "Big League Viewer" even though it says "Use in Big League Viewer" right on the back. Thus, we can now definitively attribute Vis-Ed for the Ruth slide (for those that may be interested there is one of them in the current Brockelman & Luckey auction, I don't own it but I figured I'd plug Leon's auction ). The Hollywood Stars slide is a new discovery that I had never seen before and am excited to share...


Equally as cool is the ad material that was also included, there is a orange instruction sheet for the viewer, and a mailer for the collector to send in to have their local Signal Gasoline" station reserve 8 other cards of LA and Hollywood ballplayers for them, apparently Stringer and Schuster were the "starter pack" that came with the viewer, and you then could get the other 8 from your dealer...


Also included was a fold out page from a magazine titled "Pacific Plastics" from August 1948, which features the section entitled "Progress With Plastics" and features a detailed write up of the viewer and the same two cards I showed above...


All-in-all a great little "Time Capsule" regarding this set from 1948, possibly a one of a kind grouping (especially the obscure magazine article), almost makes you wonder if this was a promo group for the Magazine itself or something. Anyways, I thought it was a fun and exciting little discovery and figure the board would enjoy seeing it.
-Rhett