1935 Wheaties

[bigfanNY]

Originally Posted by BobC

They aren't really considered by many in the hobby as true cards, and seem to have been more of an oddball issue that only a relative few collectors showed much interest in going back many years. As of late though, especially with the run-up in prices with many of the more mainstream pre-war card issues, a lot of collectors I feel have started turning to more "unconventional" card issues, like these Wheaties cards, and they have been gaining popularity. The prices are such that collectors that maybe can't otherwise afford items of certain players from the more conventional card sets can now look to issues like these Wheaties cards instead. And it also seems that set collectors are slowly being replaced by more type card and/or specific player/HOF collectors. So, these Wheaties cards help to fill in and cover such collecting niches. And the fact that the major TPGs do grade them is a plus, despite the added expense that can be incurred from grading them due to the need for oversized holders. Especially for Registry people who are looking for a fairly new set, or trying to find another card for a specific player's master set, and so on. Personally think the Wheaties items are great, and include some very colorful and unique designs and images. And when they are in really nice shape and condition, that can look amazing.

They may not be everybody's cup of tea, but I think more and more people are noticing and picking up on them, and their desirability, as time goes by.

I have no idea why anyone especially members of this forum would say that Wheaties Backs are not Baseball cards. Every major catalig lists them as Baseball cards. The first trade I made with John Ramirez in 1975 was a 1960 Post Cereal for a Gehringer with most of the box intact. So in OP's view since both the 1960 post and the wheaties were from cereal boxes we were not actually trading baseball cards.
From the begining baseball player images have been issued along with various products to boost sales. I feel the pain of poster Keith Thompson who's Mom would not buy Wheaties. My Mon wouldn't buy Kelloggs and definitely no Pop Tarts despite the cards promised in the Box.
But yes Bob and Kieth Wheaties are Baseball cards. So are Post Cereals, Hunters, Briggs Eskay Meats 1910 Orange Borders and other candy boxes. And every other issue that some fortunate youngster cut out, or off of a box. A box they either convinced their Mom to buy or saved their own pennies to bring home.
They exist today because they were treasured and preserved by the card collectors of the past. And they will be passed along to card collectors in the future becase they are treasured by many card collectors today...but like all things they are not treasured by everyone.

[smitti8]

Consider me hooked, with a little bit of love they present well and they still have previously undocumented specimens floating around like this series 4 mini Hemsley I recently found.

[jefferyepayne]

I'm a big fan of Wheaties cards but focus on the football ones. There are 50 football Wheaties box cuts from the 30s and I completed the 'set' years ago. I think the reason why the Pop seems so small is that a lot of collectors of these don't bother getting them graded. All of mine are raw including several I cracked from their plastic tombs.

Thought members might like to see the Wheaties display I had in my display case for a while. I've added many new ones since this display was built (including some nice complete boxes) but I really like how this display came out.







jeff

[Casey2296]

Nice display Jeff.

[bigfanNY]

Originally Posted by smitti8

Consider me hooked, with a little bit of love they present well and they still have previously undocumented specimens floating around like this series 4 mini Hemsley I recently found.

Great card although the Mini cards are sumilar to series 4 cards they are in fact their own series. I want to say series 16 but I would have to verify. I owned a Gehringer for many years. And in 50 years of collecting ( first card show 1973) I have only seen 5 different cards from this series. There is a thread here on net54 where 3 different cards are shown.

[riggs336]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

Great card although the Mini cards are sumilar to series 4 cards they are in fact their own series. I want to say series 16 but I would have to verify. I owned a Gehringer for many years. And in 50 years of collecting ( first card show 1973) I have only seen 5 different cards from this series. There is a thread here on net54 where 3 different cards are shown.

There are two series of mini cards, series 14 and 15, and they are beyond tough. I have read they were only available to commercial outlets (restaurants, railroad dining cars, coffee shops, etc.) but have no idea if that's true.

I do know that I have completed all the other baseball series other than these two but have never owned a 14 or 15.

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

Great card although the Mini cards are sumilar to series 4 cards they are in fact their own series. I want to say series 16 but I would have to verify. I owned a Gehringer for many years. And in 50 years of collecting ( first card show 1973) I have only seen 5 different cards from this series. There is a thread here on net54 where 3 different cards are shown.

Perhaps this is the thread showing/discussing these scarce mini Wheaties?

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...light=wheaties

Brian

[bigfanNY]

Brian yes that is one of the threads I remember. Excuse my laziness for saying series 16 when I should have just looked it up. I have only ever seen the mini series that is similar to series 4.

Bob C.

I think that the popularity or unpopularity of Wheaties can be explained without saying that they are not Baseball cards. Their size, the fact that so many that originally collected them have passed on. The rise and dramatic decline in the Wheaties boxes of the 80's and 90's. These and many other contribute to how popular or unpopular Wheaties boxes from the 30's are. And yet they are treasured by many .You yourself say you treasure some. My point is they should be treasured as the baseball cards they clearly are.
And your point on Post Cereal vs Wheaties innores the example I used, 1960 post cereal cards are full box backs with only one player.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

Brian yes that is one of the threads I remember. Excuse my laziness for saying series 16 when I should have just looked it up. I have only ever seen the mini series that is similar to series 4.

Bob C.

I think that the popularity or unpopularity of Wheaties can be explained without saying that they are not Baseball cards. Their size, the fact that so many that originally collected them have passed on. The rise and dramatic decline in the Wheaties boxes of the 80's and 90's. These and many other contribute to how popular or unpopular Wheaties boxes from the 30's are. And yet they are treasured by many .You yourself say you treasure some. My point is they should be treasured as the baseball cards they clearly are.
And your point on Post Cereal vs Wheaties innores the example I used, 1960 post cereal cards are full box backs with only one player.

Jonathan,

I am not disagreeing with you, or anyone else at all. I was merely giving a possible explanation to the OP about why these early Wheaties items may not be as valued and collected by some as are other items. I never said that some people not thinking of them as true cards was the only possible explanation, or that these are or aren't cards. Some collectors though are not as into items that aren't more like traditional baseball cards, and that is just a simple fact. -

And I didn't ignore the 1960 reference you made to Post cereal items, but the truth is, those full back 1960 items are not as widely collected as the later Post cereal cards from 1961 through 1963. I referenced those later cards to demonstrate how the size of the card/item being cut from the cereal carton can have an impact on how many in the hobby perceive them as cards, and how much they then want to collect them. Not everyone, but still a pretty large percentage IMO. Also, the 1960 Post items/cards were only on boxes of their Grape Nuts cereal IIRC. I don't know about you, but I was never a Grape Nuts fan as a kid, and suspect a lot more kids would have liked and asked for a whole lot of other Post cereals before asking Mom to specifically buy a box of Grape Nuts. Another reason there probably aren't anywhere near as many of those 1960 items/cards around today as there are of the 1961-62-63 Post Cereal cards. And also, since the 1960 items ONLY came on Grape Nuts boxes, I sort of assumed when you mentioned Post cereal, you were referring to ALL post cereals, not just Grape Nuts, and may have just had a typo in putting down 1960 as the year. Those 1960 Grape Nuts items/cards are great and fantastic items/collectibles as well, but I bet if you ran a poll of everyone on here, you'd find out a lot more people are into and have collections of the 1961-63 Post cereal cards than ever had collections of the 1960 Grape Nuts ones or were that into them.

And another way to look at this, what is the difference between collecting items on the back of Wheaties boxes versus what are on the fronts? A lot of people over more recent years have gone on to collect Wheaties and other cereal's boxes for the front images. But usually, you see those collectors going for the complete boxes, and they don't usually cut the front of the boxes off to collect just those, do they? I never really heard of anyone collecting the fronts of Wheaties boxes refer to them as cards either. You don't suppose that for the many who collect entire, more modern, Wheaties boxes for the front images that they wouldn't think about images on the backs of Wheaties boxes the same way, would you? In other words, they view collecting the backs as part of the overall box as well, just like if they were collecting the front. Or is there some difference I never heard of where if you cut/collect something from the back of a cereal box it is definitely considered a card, but if you do the same thing and cut something off the front of the cereal box, it isn't? That would seem silly to think of that in two different ways.

[Keith H. Thompson]

and I would agree that cut out player images on the back could (and perhaps should) be considered "cards" so that they can be catalogued for collector interest. This could also be done for all of the early years. The 1935 "issue" look like they should be cut out with the borders, but later years not so much.

I personally have several hundred Wheaties complete boxes from recent years. Many are commemorative type of sporting events.

Do any members remember an offer that Wheaties advertised? Send in a picture of your own, and they would reproduce it on a Wheaties Box just like they would a player. I did this and have it framed in a special hard plastic clear case made for the purpose. Perfect condition. Maybe I should send it in for grading?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

I have no idea why anyone especially members of this forum would say that Wheaties Backs are not Baseball cards. Every major catalig lists them as Baseball cards. The first trade I made with John Ramirez in 1975 was a 1960 Post Cereal for a Gehringer with most of the box intact. So in OP's view since both the 1960 post and the wheaties were from cereal boxes we were not actually trading baseball cards.
From the begining baseball player images have been issued along with various products to boost sales. I feel the pain of poster Keith Thompson who's Mom would not buy Wheaties. My Mon wouldn't buy Kelloggs and definitely no Pop Tarts despite the cards promised in the Box.
But yes Bob and Kieth Wheaties are Baseball cards. So are Post Cereals, Hunters, Briggs Eskay Meats 1910 Orange Borders and other candy boxes. And every other issue that some fortunate youngster cut out, or off of a box. A box they either convinced their Mom to buy or saved their own pennies to bring home.
They exist today because they were treasured and preserved by the card collectors of the past. And they will be passed along to card collectors in the future becase they are treasured by many card collectors today...but like all things they are not treasured by everyone.

Because these early Wheaties items are just like you stated, they're the backs of the boxes, whereas the Post cereal items were cut from the backs and are basically the same/similar standard size and shape of what are considered "cards" in the more mainstream hobby definition of what a "card" is thought of as by many collectors. I myself enjoy and have collected many early Wheaties items, and don't really care much about what does or doesn't constitute a "card" when it comes to defining such items. Forgive me for merely attempting to respond to the OP's question by pointing out that not everyone considers the entire back of a Wheaties box as a true baseball card, and that will likely include many Net54 members as well. There is no one, single correct definition as to what really constitutes a "true baseball card". It can, and does, vary from person to person. Again, I merely tried to respond to the OP's post, and focused somewhat on his implied question of why these Wheaties items don't seem to garner the same overall interest with collectors that other items do.

You mention how these Wheaties backs are listed in catalogs, but so are things like Sports Stamps, PX7 Double Header coins, German Transfers, M101-2 Sporting News Supplements, and on and on, but I don't think anyone normally considers any of those such items as "cards" at all. If you consider Wheaties carton backs as cards, great. And if you don't consider them as cards, that is great also. I simply consider them valuable collectibles, and leave it to others to get worked up as to what a particular collectible is considered as. To each, their own!

And by the way, where in my original response to the OP did I ever definitively state I personally consider these Wheaties carton backs are not cards? I didn't say they were or weren't cards, yet the very first line of your post seems to insinuate I did since you specifically chose and quoted my earlier post to respond to, and then there's your direct response, naming both myself and another poster (Keith), and asserting to us both that these Wheaties backs are definitely cards. The OP never said these weren't cards either.