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warshawlawI also have to give credit where credit is due. Woody Scharf wrote the seminal articles on these cards in The Trader Speaks in December 1979-January 1980-February 1980. According to him (Jan. '79):
"The late H.R. Shapley told me that he had purchased these cards from vending machines as early as 1923, although player records indicate that some cards (players) may have made a debut a year or two later.... The first two printings - in a red-sepia color - are seen either with a post card back or with a plain blank back. Identification is made easy by the satement "THIS SIDE FOR CORRESPONDENCE" printed to the left on the backs of the post cards."
Woody grouped the 32 cards found in this format into Set 81. Grove was not part of this group.
I took Woody's word for it when he wrote to me in response to my ad looking for information in a 2000 VCBC classified, but I followed up with my own investigation. I think his friend's recollection is a bit off w/r/t 1923, but late 1924 is possible and 1925 is a virtual certainty. My dating analysis is based on analogous cards found in the boxing set and entertainment sets where title changes definitively date certain back styles, as well as the limited team changes found on some of these cards. I will say that if you can show me a card with a blank back or a PC back with This Side For Correspondence on its left, you almost certainly have a 1925 or 1926 printing date.
Scharf attributes Grove to Set 83, which is the last (ca. 1930 according to him) of the issues. I don't think this date is accurate either. First, I take issue with the fixed set analysis. It simply isn't true. The company routinely altered cards within sheets and reissued with some old cards and some new ones. The 5 "corrected" cards from the issue are 1924-5 issues with stickers over their name and team designations changed (see my web site for an example of a corrected Edd Roush). Uncut sheets of other Exhibit issues prove that the company slapped sheets together from various card plates (the 32-card full sheets were printed from combinations of 1 or 4 card printing plates) as it saw fit as players fell from grace, were traded, or supplanted by other stars. This has held true in all sports and over various years, so it is undoubtedly a reason why this "set" has a wacky number of cards and some very ugly short prints. You have to look at the card backs to get a rough idea of issue dates and even then, you can only pin it down to "no earlier than" type dating. I think given the relative numbers of different cards I've seen from the set in various venues, the Grove card was issued earlier than Scharf suggests. It is too populous a card to be the same issue as the 2nd Ruth or Gehrig or some of the other short printed later cards. The backs I've seen for Grove could have been used as early as late 1926 (where they show up on the analogous boxing cards), cerainly 1927. That's about as definitive as I can get the dates with the present information. Anyone who's got a card, flip it over and tell me what you see.
As far as Exhibit pricing in the book, I rewrote the table in '03 (how time flies!) and haven't revised it since (Bob has changed it some). I do think the numbers in the book are way low on Exhibits as they currently stand with perhaps the exception of a few Ruth and Gehrig cards and the 1928 PCLs (of course, they show up so rarely that the price structure is more or less based on 1-2 auctions that Bob and I discussed). There were several nice mid-grade HOFers from the set that sold in SGC graded form and they all closed in three figures, which is more in the ballpark for this issue given its difficulty and date. I was happily paying ex or even nm prices on these cards at the National for the few I was able to find that I needed for my set. Perhaps the inflation we've seen in other areas of the hobby is finally hitting Exhibits.
10-20-2005, 09:03 PM
1926-29 Baseball Exhibit Lefty Grove SGC 50 VG/EX "4"
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