What's the rarest card you own?

[big-six]

Scott those are beautiful

[phlflyer1]

Thanks to all who posted the kind words on my 1/1 Cobb & Wagner cards.

James, almost all of the cards that I have from this set came from a large collection of cards that my father and I obtained from the original collector back in the mid 1970s.

For the longest time, I had no idea what these cards even were until I started getting back into the hobby in the late 1990s and found a checklist for them. It turns out that, at the time, only 16 different players were known and I had 8 that were not part of the checklist (including Cobb and Wagner).

I reached out to Bob Lemke of SCD about the cards that weren't on the checklist and brought him proof one year at a show in Philadelphia. Below is the write up that Mr. Lemke put in SCD regarding the new additions to the set.

[big-six]

Epic find

[Rhotchkiss]

Scott, those are awesome. I have never seen them before. Can you post back pics? What exactly are they - notebook covers? Also, how can they be from 1910 if there is a Hornsby?

[Baseball Rarities]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Scott, those are awesome. I have never seen them before. Can you post back pics? What exactly are they - notebook covers? Also, how can they be from 1910 if there is a Hornsby?

I believe that Scott’s cards were issued as a part of a candy box. I think that I remember seeing a full box at some point that featured players on both the front and back of it.

The Hornsby is a notebook - part of a totally different issue.

[Aaron Seefeldt]

Scott wrote about the set for Old Cardboard Magazine in 2005:

https://oldcardboard.com/misc/issue03/issue03.asp

[phlflyer1]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Scott, those are awesome. I have never seen them before. Can you post back pics? What exactly are they - notebook covers? Also, how can they be from 1910 if there is a Hornsby?

Hi Ryan,

The SCD article has a couple of different checklist additions in it. The Hornsby mentioned was from a different set.

The part of the article about the additions to the 1910 All Star Baseball set starts in the middle column of the bottom part of the page and continues on the right column on the top of the page.

The cards, like a handful of other "E" cards of the period, were cut from the sides of a candy box produced by Dockman & Sons (who was also one of the brands found on the backs of E92 cards).

Since these were cut from the sides of a candy box, they are blank backed, but they are known to have been produced by Dockman & Sons as there are at least two complete boxes known to exist.

I don't own either of the complete boxes but I'm adding images of one of the complete boxes that used to be owned by Lew Lipset.

Here is the current known checklist of 24 cards in the set.

https://oldcardboard.com/e/e2/all-st...ar-bb-list.asp

[Rhotchkiss]

Wow. Very cool. And Aaron, thanks for the link

[Exhibitman]

After closing out his HOF MLB career, Arky Vaughan went to San Francisco for a final season in the sun with the PCL Seals. He was supposed to go on the team's 1949 postseason tour of Japan but retired instead. It was the first American goodwill tour of Japan since the war and did immeasurable good in restoring relations between the country. The Japanese card makers issued a number of menko (cartoon) and bromide (photographic) cards of the Seals, including these Vaughan cards:



And this one is so rare that no one can seem to figure out what it is:

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by phlflyer1

Hi Ryan,
The SCD article has a couple of different checklist additions in it. The Hornsby mentioned was from a different set. The part of the article about the additions to the 1910 All Star Baseball set starts in the middle column of the bottom part of the page and continues on the right column on the top of the page. The cards, like a handful of other "E" cards of the period, were cut from the sides of a candy box produced by Dockman & Sons (who was also one of the brands found on the backs of E92 cards). Since these were cut from the sides of a candy box, they are blank backed, but they are known to have been produced by Dockman & Sons as there are at least two complete boxes known to exist. I don't own either of the complete boxes but I'm adding images of one of the complete boxes that used to be owned by Lew Lipset. Here is the current known checklist of 24 cards in the set.

What an interesting set! So there were ballplayers on both sides of the box, right, two to the box? If one discovery of new ones expands the checklist by half, I guess there could have been many more players in the original issue. I've always wondered how things like this can be so rare. Anybody else have any of these? Perhaps these were test issues, or proofs, otherwise why aren't there more of them around? You'd think more than one kid would have kept the boxes to put other cards or stuff in. Wonder what the candy or gifts consisted of? And what's with the "privilege of opening and examining" on the flap? What's that supposed to mean? Last mystery: how in the world did Scott's two examples get graded so differently by SGC? A clearly hand-cut card gets a "5?" Wow! Overall, these are the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

[Leon]

Great thread and stuff shown. The rarest ones are great.

Some fun postcards.

[phlflyer1]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

What an interesting set! So there were ballplayers on both sides of the box, right, two to the box? If one discovery of new ones expands the checklist by half, I guess there could have been many more players in the original issue. I've always wondered how things like this can be so rare. Anybody else have any of these? Perhaps these were test issues, or proofs, otherwise why aren't there more of them around? You'd think more than one kid would have kept the boxes to put other cards or stuff in. Wonder what the candy or gifts consisted of? And what's with the "privilege of opening and examining" on the flap? What's that supposed to mean? Last mystery: how in the world did Scott's two examples get graded so differently by SGC? A clearly hand-cut card gets a "5?" Wow! Overall, these are the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

Hi Hank,

I'll try to keep my reply brief as I don't want to take up much more of the thread discussing this one particular set with all of the other great rarities being posted.

As Aaron mentioned, I wrote about the 1910 All Star Baseball set in Old Cardboard magazine issue #3 (thanks Aaron for posting the link!). There is a lot more detail to be found in that article than what I'm about to post in response. Feel free to PM me if you still have questions after this response or would like to discuss the set further.

Yes, there are two subjects per box (one on each side). Not only that, each of the known boxes consists of one subject from the American League and one from the National League at the same position. Of the known set checklist, there exists a pair of players for each position (1 AL, 1 NL) with two notable exceptions, four subjects listed as "Baserunners" (again split between the leagues), a manager for each league and Cobb and Wagner listed as "Batters".

The notable exceptions missing from the known checklist are a catcher for the AL and a second baseman for the NL. Other than that, I think that the known set of 24 subjects is fairly complete as the composition of one player from each league at a given position seems pretty intentional based upon the box design and the checklist of known subjects.

Why don't more examples exist from this or other candy box issues of the period such as Baseball Bats, J=K or Orange Borders? (BTW, nice Orange Border Wagner George!)

I would say that, for kids of the time, the candy was the main thing that they were interested in. I would imagine that in most cases the boxes were ripped open, the candy was consumed and the boxes discarded. Also, these candy issues were likely distributed in a much smaller region than most of the tobacco products of the era.

As far as why SGC choose to give the Cobb a numerical grade I have no idea. They were all cut from a candy box so really I would have expected it to be graded "Authentic" like almost all of the others were that I submitted from my set.