1961-63 post & jell-o strange & funny tales
POST CEREAL DIARY – Stories of Strange and Serendipitous Findings
As a few of you know, I have developed a virtually endless fascination with the 1961-63 Post cereal baseball card promotions. Having re-entered the hobby as an adult collector in 1978, I have benefited immensely from the knowledge and experiences imparted by true hobby pioneers, “old time” dealers, and modern-day throwback collectors sharing a passion for the blank cardboard back wonders. I thought it might be fun to recall some personal anecdotes of my exploits in pursuing the 1961-63 Post baseball card sets, and inviting YOU to do the same.
As a departure point, I will not be repeating experiences addressed in my monographs. This narrative focuses solely on strange and serendipitous encounters that contributed to completing 1961-63 sets and acquiring advertising and pre-production items.
One of my most vivid memories occurred in the early 1990s at a National in Anaheim. As a paying customer scouting tables for inventory and reacquainting myself from some long-term hobby friends, I stopped in my tracks upon seeing (so-called) professionally graded 1963 Post baseball cards. The dealer was adorned in a suit and tie, and focused on unloading a cache of slabbed cards from a leather attaché case and placing them in a row of glass display cases with hinged covers. After standing quietly in front of his table for a few moments and opening my 3-ring binder housing “want lists”, he glanced up and without missing a beat in arranging his wares, dismissingly asked if I wanted to look at anything. What transpired next could have been scripted for airing on the Jerry Seinfield Show.
I asked the dealer if I could look at the “well known” professionally slabbed, labeled, and graded cards of a 1963 Post Willie Davis, Carl Yastrzemski, and Bob Aspromonte. The dealer opened the glass case and announced that he would permit me to handle one card at a time. As soon as the card landed in the palm of my hand, it confirmed what I strongly believed was the case; the Willie Davis card was a 1963 JELL-O. I quickly repeated the inspection with the Yaz and Aspromonte entombed cards, which were also JELL-Os.
The reverse of each sealed plastic holder sported a price sticker ranging from $150 to $400. As I handed the last of the 3 cards back to the dealer, I quietly said: “The prices are reasonable for the short-printed 1963 Post. But these cards are JELL-Os. You can tell the difference by the cardboard size and extension of the red statistics line.” With a look that could kill, he snatched the Aspromonte card from my outreached hand and exclaimed: “It doesn’t make any difference. They are all scarce.”
Thinking that the dealer was perhaps misinformed and giving him the benefit of the doubt, I quietly began to explain why the 1963 Post of the 3 players were relatively scarce in contrast to the 1963 JELL-O. Not permitting me to finish my explanation, he blurted out: “If you’re not going to buy anything, move on!”
As I stepped away from his table and turned to walk away, in conversational tone and earshot of other collectors, I said: “Sorry. I didn’t know if you were unaware of the difference between the Post and JELL-O, or if you are intentionally misrepresenting the cards you are selling!” To this day, I feel that if he wasn’t obstructed by the hinged glass tops in their upright position, he would have leapt over the table and gone for my throat.
A second – and far less confrontational – adventure occurred at a Chantilly, Virginia show in early 2000. As many Post and JELL-O collectors will attest, it was not uncommon for dealers to leave their inventories at home or in the shop. If they happened to bring the cards to the show or convention, frequently you had to ask if they had the issues and they would appear from under the table or a stack of boxes containing higher demand cards. At the show in question, I asked and the dealer produced a box of loose oddball cards in thin plastic sleeves with white stickers sporting scribbled prices.
The oddball and loose assortments frequently are fun to paw through and sometimes offer unexpected treasures. However, in this particular instance I walked away empty handed. In reality, I found several Post and JELL-O baseball cards that may have found their way into my master set or research materials; unfortunately, the marked prices were outrageous even for VG+ condition cards. Why? Because the dealer said they were “scarce, blank-backed cards”. Attempts to explain the difference between Post or JELL-O cards printed on product cardboard boxes versus e.g. Topps proofs were futile, so I courteously filed the cards back into the oddball box and walked away.
My final contribution to the serendipitous discovery of Post baseball cards involved an eBay offering that popped up in the early 1990s. While it may be hard to believe in 2024, there was a period where eBay was not a center for buying and selling sports memorabilia. More significantly, the sellers frequently were not mainstream collectors and simply found items in the back of pantries, corners of basements, or in cleaning out homes of deceased or transitional relatives.
Cutting to the chase, I was mindlessly scrolling through eBay and read a title akin to “Cereal Box with Kasko, Jiminez, and Baseball Players”. I contacted the seller, and discovered she had an unopened box of 1963 Post Raisin Bran she was selling for $50. When asking where she found the box, she confided it was stored in an abandoned residential back yard bomb shelter in Orange County, California! I purchased and enjoyed the box until selling it to Bill McAvoy at the Fort Washington, PA Show some years later.
So … What are your funny or outrageous Post and JELL-O stories? KEEP ME POSTED! – Dan
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