But wait… you know who else was selling square corner cards around the same time as D
But wait… you know who else was selling square corner cards around the same time as David Festberg? The Baseball card society (BCS) and thanks to butchie_t from net54baseball.com we know what they were offering. Butch was kind enough to provide scans of his cards and the letters he received from BCS. There might be a clue as to where and how David Festberg was selling his cards. My theory is he did not find them in a warehouse or acquired them in an unscrupulous manner, he purchased them from a widow's dealer who had a big collection- no colossal collection of square corner cards we call Bond Bread.
I believe there is a tie in between the Festberg find and the BCS cards. I kind of let the cat out of the bag…”widow’s dealer”. Let’s read from some of the letters from BCS that Butch provided: It says that BSC was offered a limited number of the very famous 1947 Homogenized Bond baseball card set. It describes the Bond Bread set, and then it says, all the baseball cards that weren’t put in bread packages were stored in a dusty warehouse, and quite literally, forgotten about when they went out of business. Many years later a famous collector discovered the cards in a warehouse and snapped up all the cards, how many it does not say, maybe 70,000 cards. but properly less.
This is just a guess, there is no real proof of how many cards there were. I have based this on press production and the paper shortage at the time and the population of baseball cards printed circa 1947. Because of the paper shortage at that time, Aarco would not take a chance on a large production of cards (population) of printed cards. For those of you who did not know - the total population of a set of baseball cards…is the total number of cards that were printed. For example the total population of 1947 Bond Bread Jackie Robinson baseball cards was 328,592. Today the number of baseball cards produced each year (population) is about 1 to 2 million.
Let’s say they wanted to print 10,000 sets of 48 cards. It would take 10,000 sheets of paper to print 48 cards to a set for a total of 480,000 cards total. I believe it would have been less than that, say 5,000 cards set of 48 making 240,000 cards. That would take 5,000 sheets of paper. Few baseball cards were produced in the mid-1940s -1950s due to paper shortages during World War II. 240,000 cards would have been alot of cards. Production resumed in the United States in 1948, with the Bowman Gum and Leaf Candy Company releasing cards.
Now pay attention to what the BCS letter says: Ironically- he died (the dealer) a few months ago and his widow offered us (BCS) the card sets that remained. This was circa 1980s. What does it say, “offered BCS the cards that remained.
Sounds like a familiar story, warehouse find, but it ends there. Notice it says the find was by a famous collector- who snapped up all the cards. Sounds like he purchased the cards circa 1950s-1960s. The collector did not just find them sitting around, he discovered Aarco had the cards in a warehouse and offered to buy them. More or less he purchased them from Aarco and when he died circa 1980s his widow put them up for sale. Who was there to snapped up the cards, David Festberg and BCS.
It is believed that Festberg had about 20,000 cards, no clue as to how many BCS had, but I would believe no more than 5,000 - 20,000. Ok let's say David Festberg did buy his cards from this widow, notice it says BCS brough the cards that were left.
I think the story behind a David Festberg warehouse find comes from this story. Something else to look at is the BCS letter says-the 1947 Bond Bread set was printed for only one year, contained 48 cards in all. And that they purchased the best of the set- 24 cards in all from the dealer’s widow. The story of the Festberg cards having 24 cards to its set -come from this story as well. I believe that a famous collector brought all the Aarco cards with square corners and when he died his widow sold most of the cards to David Festberg and BCS brought the remaining cards.
Therefore the BCS and Festberg cards are the exact same cards as the 48 card set printed at the same time. This explains why they are both on the exact same paper stock. Some believe that the BCS images of 24 cards are the same on the Festberg, but we do not have a true list of names for the Festberg cards, they could easily be any of the 48 card set. We do not know how many of the 48 cards Festberg had in its set. It could have 24 ,48 or any number in the set.
We need someone who knows, someone who purchased a whole set from David Festburg to speak up. If he did sell a whole set or just individual cards. John
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02-14-2025, 09:40 AM
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