Vintage Baseball Card Books - Help Me Add to the List Please

[that T206 Guy]

Originally Posted by jerseygary

While not a true baseball card book, my book The League of Outsider Baseball: An Illustrated History of Baseball's Forgotten Heroes tells the stories of some famous but mostly not-so-famous ballplayers with very interesting tales. Besides writing and researching the book I illustrated it as well, with most of the portraits done in a tobacco card style. Here are some shots of it:

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And I also publish a 68 page magazine called 21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball which like the book tells the story of obscure players and stories illustrated with my baseball card illustrations:

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Thank You

They Were Added to the List.

Do you do the Artwork?

It looks Amazing.

[bigfanNY]

Jeffrey Burdick's American card catalog. Is the canon of baseball card books.
The 3 book lew Lipsit set should be at top of your list. It will bring a better understanding to everything else you read.
I would also get sports collectors bible 1st or 2nd edition
Any sports card diagest's
And you can pick up old SCD or Beckett catalogs cheap I would get a couple maybe every 5 years or so you can see how prices have changed over the past 40 years or so they have been around.
Hope this helps
Jonathan

[JLange]

Two very good baseball postcard references:

Sports Postcard Price Guide, J.L. Mashburn, 2nd ed. 1998.

Tuff Stuff's Baseball Postcard Collection, Ron Menchine, 1999


One very good book for researching cards / players / teams:

Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century, Marc Okkonen, 1993

[Leon]

It took this long for someone to mention the most important book there is to vintage card collecting, The American Card Catalog. Blasphemy. That, the Big Krause SCD and Lew's Encyclopedia(s) would be stalwarts to any baseball card book collection. I believe it's the first 3 I acquired.

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

Jeffrey Burdick's American card catalog. Is the canon of baseball card books.
The 3 book lew Lipsit set should be at top of your list. It will bring a better understanding to everything else you read.
I would also get sports collectors bible 1st or 2nd edition
Any sports card diagest's
And you can pick up old SCD or Beckett catalogs cheap I would get a couple maybe every 5 years or so you can see how prices have changed over the past 40 years or so they have been around.
Hope this helps
Jonathan

[jerseygary]

There was a book that I had back in the early (I think) 80's called "Baseball Cards: A Collector's Guide" by the editors of the Consumer Guide. It was spiral bound and had all these great cards and wrappers in full color. I pored over that book for hours! I still keep a look out for one when I go to used book stores, but no dice so far. I think I recall one of the editors was a member on this board.

Anyway, it might not be that interesting today with the internet and all, but back then it really brought those old cards to life!

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[jerseygary]

Originally Posted by that T206 Guy

Thank You

They Were Added to the List.

Do you do the Artwork?

It looks Amazing.

Yes, I do all the illustrations as well as write the stories and conduct the research. The books came out of my website, The Infinite Baseball Card Set, which I started back in 2010 after my father passed away suddenly. He and I had a great relationship and would talk several times a week about baseball and odd ball characters that played the game. When he died, I was living in Hollywood, and none of my friends like baseball, let alone the history of the game, so I had no one to talk to about characters like Benny Kauff or Memo Luna. So late one night I started this little blog on which I drew a simple baseball card. Because the players were not well known, I had to write their story to make it interesting, and before I knew it people were coming to the site.

Over the years the stories and drawings have become more involved. I still write the blog as well. Keeps me off the streets at night...