BIGGEST Mailday/Week Ever! Pre-War Collection Reboot

[mouschi]

If you are reading this anywhere near the time I have published this article, you may have a number of fears and concerns. The Coronavirus has certainly changed the world we live in - at least temporarily. As a baseball fan, one concern that afflicts you but maybe not anyone else around you is the delay of the season.

As baseball fans, we endure the long, hard road from November until Spring Training. When it gets here, it is like a breath of fresh air. This is not something that has been afforded to us yet, so we wait with bated breath (while locked down in our homes) for life to resume, and with it, baseball.

While I yearn for the 2020 season to get started, I can easily counter it with the fact that I am madly in love with a time period in which baseball didn't have any video footage.*Pre-1900 baseball doesn't have much in the way of video to speak of at all.

Speaking of a time period where there was no video footage, how about a period where there wasn't even photography?

I had a buddy reach out with this:



Have any ideas who might have signed this?

Don't think 1800s. Think 1700s. Think 1st President of the United States. Yes, friends ...

GEORGE WASHINGTON!



He sent it to me to create something, so after wiping the drool off the case, I smashed it to bits.



and created this!



This will soon be slabbed again, only in its new custom card outfit! It is important to note that the signature was not harmed in any way, and Joey can always take apart the card and resubmit the signature by itself if he just wants the signature in a slab alone again.

Now, back to old cards ... maybe not 18th century, but old nonetheless!

In 2019, I invested heavily into vintage baseball cards. There are many cards below that you probably recognize, but many you probably don't. (Now, almost all of them are gone.)



I was ecstatic to be able to pick up some cards that have graced the covers of magazines since I was a child.

After a while, I quickly noticed I was picking up cards not because I loved them, but because I found a reason for their significance. At the beginning of 2020, I decided to sell off half of them, because I don't want to own things just because they have created significance in my mind. I want to own them because I love them. Everything, including most all of my woodcuts sold within a few months. I want my collection to tell a story of all of baseball history, but I also want to have the flexibility to be fluid with it because I'm not a millionaire, or anywhere close!

In the past few months, I've been interviewed several times. One of the last interviews was for a podcast, and they asked "What would your family do with your cards if you died?" I told them it is quite possible all my cards could be gone the very next week, so you never know!

Well, as it turned out, on a whim, I sold everything else aside from four cards to a reseller mere days after this interview! It was a total "on a whim" thing, too. I wasn't actively searching - I just found a guy who buys, offered my cards up, and we did a deal. I did decide to keep a few, though.

It didn't take long for me to realize how much I missed old cardboard, and in the same week of selling, I actually bought some of my old cards back! (Where have we heard that from before?) At the top of the list was this:

1887/88 Allen & Ginter N28 Complete Baseball Set - displayed with a tobacco tin of the same era. Like many of the Canseco cards I got back into my collection, I was more excited about these the second time than I was the first! Once I displayed them like this, I was hooked all over again. They feel like they should be in a museum - I literally don't feel worthy of owning them. That may seem a bit over-dramatic, I guess, but it is true. The neat thing about these, is that they are original works of art - they were made by hand and hand made tools. To me, this makes them extra special, when compared to the way cards were produced in the 20th century. It is quite possible that these were stuck in an album together over 125 years ago, and kept in this super nice pack-fresh condition on the front, with damage on the back from the glue.



Like the Allen & Ginter cards above, 1888 Goodwin was created in the same way - by hand / hand made tools. I LOVE the Goodwin set, because it is so colorful. Check out the stippling up close ... they truly feel like works of art.



I ended up picking up these guys here:

Timothy Keefe (HOF) - The 2nd 300 game winner in baseball history. I lost out on this card in PSA 4 form exactly a year to the day I purchased the one shown below. It went for over $1,500 - I'm glad I didn't win, because the eye appeal front the front is very similar!

Dan Brouthers (HOF) - Brouthers is considered to be baseball's first slugger. It is hard to believe, but back then, chicks didn't dig the long ball like they do now. Nicknamed Big Dan, Brouthers was 6'2, which was tall compared to the average male height back then of 5'7. I missed out on this card on eBay last year, and settled for one I didn't care too much for, then eventually sold. Then I got this one, and am very happy with it!



FUN FACT! Who is this man?

This is a picture of my 1874 Woodcut of Boston. Among various pioneers of the sport we all love such as Spalding, Harry Wright and Deacon White is a man who is looking off to the side. Who is he? He is none other than the man who his the first home run. Roscoe Barnes!



While these cards are nothing short of exciting for me, I am super excited to say I was able to pick up the entire 1888 Goodwin set! Shown below are the big guns - the other 3 cards are behind these.



Here are my favorites: I consider the Glasscock to be the most beautiful 19th century card ever made (bare hands and fielding on ... what is that, a beach? Park?) Cap Anson with the orange colored sky, and King Kelly, with the storm brewing in the background. The artist did that allegedly because of his stormy personality. The condition is superb when compared to their numerical grades, and the coloring is off the charts! I actually had a Glasscock and Kelly already, sold them and bought them back, but they were graded by SGC, so I decided to get rid of them AGAIN so I could have everything in PSA.



Is it me, or does Anson appear to be related to Van Gogh? Fun fact: Cap Anson was born *before* Van Gogh (1852 vs 1853).



The 19th century fun didn't stop with the Allen & Ginter / Goodwin complete sets. I was also able to reel in this one ... and it's a biggie:

The PSA POP report shows only 6 others out there, with this being the only one stating his bare head! 1887 Old Judge King Kelly portrait denoting "$10,000 Kelly" in the picture.



Kelly is the man who was the subject of the first record American pop hit Slide, Kelly, Slide. His picture hung in every bar in the 1800s and was the first to make autograph seeking popular. His nicknames were The $10,000 beauty, $10,000 Kelly & King Kelly. It has been said that his exploits would have filled more than three books. He was the inventor of the hook slide, and the most popular baseball player in the 19th century. For aesthetic purposes, I put the SGC in the middle, but make no mistake: The biggest card of the three below is the Old Judge portrait.



My love affair with the game that we have no video footage of continues to grow, but truth be told, I love all pre-war baseball, which is why I'm so excited about the following. The biggest pickups for me thus far are easily from the Cracker Jack set. The mystique and beauty of Cracker Jacks cannot be understated. The deep red backgrounds perfectly showcase the players depicted on each card. I remember Field of Dreams showing off some mock Cracker Jack cards in the beginning of the movie, and each time I think of them, I think of the verse that speaks of them in "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".

I love EVERYTHING about it. The caramel staining, coloring ... everything. It is just so beautiful, and carries with it just enough staining to tell a story, while not detracting from its eye appeal. No wrinkles, no horrible stuff ... just perfection. (Well, technically SGC 50/4 ... but way nicer than I ever though I would get!)



But that's not all.

This next card is one that I've dreamed about. It (and the Cobb above) likely would not have happened had I not gotten rid of the vintage cards I collected from the last year. It is among the most important and iconic cards in the hobby. (At the moment, the PSA Cobb Authentic shown at the top of this post is for sale/trade.)

On a whim, I recently ran a poll on Twitter asking what people would prefer: a '15 Cracker Jack Shoeless Joe Jackson or a '52 Topps Mickey Mantle. To me, it is clear: The Shoeless Joe, but the Twitterverse didn't agree with me. Mantle won 67% to 33%. I didn't think it was terribly odd though, given the '52 Topps Mantle's notoriety of being the 2nd most popular card ever made. Nevertheless, I'm team CJ Shoeless Joe all the way.

Unbeknownst to me at the time of the poll, this monster was right around the corner and ready to become a part of my collection.

**CONTINUED ON THE NEXT POST**

[mouschi]

......BAM!



The eye appeal is absolutely off the charts! Without a doubt the biggest card I have ever owned in my life (with the second being the Cobb above it.) Frankly, I'm not sure there is another card I'd want more at this point. In the not too distant future, I do hope to land some cards that I used to have ... a 1933 Goudey Ruth #144, 1934 Goudey Gehrig Yellow, 1938 Goudey DiMaggio Comic bg, 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson and yes ... 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle. But to me, this one trumps them all.

Phew, what a whirlwind of a month it has been! I've gone from boiling Albert Pujols cards ....



...so*I could make test customs for my collection ...



... to selling off most of my vintage, and finding vintage pieces for my collection fit for a museum. I think that's why I'm so hooked on this hobby...it is so deep.

I'm still looking for the following in auth/1/2 grade - the main criteria is that the fronts have to be clean:

Various key 19th Century HOFers (Roger Connor being at the top of my list)
1933 Goudey Babe Ruth #144
1934 Goudey Lou Gehrig (Yellow Background)
1938 Goudey Heads Up Joe DiMaggio (cartoon background)
1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson
1952 Topps Mickey Mantle

Even with baseball out of commission for the foreseeable future, I'm addicted to cardboard with pictures of the men who have played the game. Here is a pic of my top 10 ... errr ... 11 non Canseco cards in my collection: (one of these things is not like the other!) Crazy to think many of the cards shown below depict people who lived through the Civil War! It is *so* hard to not include the rest of the cards from the Allen & Ginter and Goodwin sets below, because there are so many other Hall of Famers and should-be Hall of Famers, but to keep it concise, here are my absolute favorites:



BTW ... got any rare Canseco cards?

Net54: A **BIG** Thank you to everyone on here who I've done deals with and have learned from. I appreciate you accepting me into your family over the years and look forward to doing more deals and learning even more from you all in the future!

[Bpm0014]

That was really fun to read!

[jbl79]

Love the write up. Congratulations on picking up two iconic cards. Both have great eye-appeal and are well-centered.

[obcbeatle]

This post made my day :-) Thanks for sharing!

[mouschi]

Thank you guys for your comments - much appreciated!

[oldjudge]

I got a kick out of the Anson comparison with Van Gogh—brilliant observation

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

I got a kick out of the Anson comparison with Van Gogh—brilliant observation

Ever since I noticed, it is just one of those things I can't unsee - plus, I never realized until now how often I see Van Gogh!

[samosa4u]

I really like this thread, but I have a few questions:

1) Why would somebody ruin the G. Washington document by cutting his signature out like that? That's a pretty stupid thing to do.

2) You've cracked the signature out of the PSA case, but you do know that it could get rejected the second time it gets submitted, right?

[BeanTown]

Thanks for posting

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

I really like this thread, but I have a few questions:

1) Why would somebody ruin the G. Washington document by cutting his signature out like that? That's a pretty stupid thing to do.

2) You've cracked the signature out of the PSA case, but you do know that it could get rejected the second time it gets submitted, right?

Hey Samosa4u! Answers below:
1) Why would somebody ruin the G. Washington document by cutting his signature out like that? That's a pretty stupid thing to do.
== I don't have any idea on this. I just received it in the psa case as-is. Maybe it was on scrap paper? This is a common argument even in our baseball card hobby ... some people say it is stupid to cut up jerseys, bats, etc. Obviously, this is on a way, way, way less level, but I have a Canseco card that is extremely special to me. It has the Rawlings tag from a rookie game used jersey. Some people got upset that Panini hacked it up. For me? I couldn't be happier, because it means it is mine

2) You've cracked the signature out of the PSA case, but you do know that it could get rejected the second time it gets submitted, right?
== This wasn't my call, it was sent to me to be cracked - the label, pictures, etc. can all serve as documentation if PSA needs it. Could it be rejected? I guess, but then again, it could also fall from the mantle and get cracked, lost in a flood, etc. There are risks for literally everything, and this is one risk the owner was willing to take - I'm glad he did!

[timzcardz]

Great read, as all of yours always are.

Boiling cards?

Come on. I KNOW you were afraid of COVID transfer!

But I have to know. What does the boiling do for/get you?

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by timzcardz

Great read, as all of yours always are.

Boiling cards?

Come on. I KNOW you were afraid of COVID transfer!

But I have to know. What does the boiling do for/get you?

LOL! Truth be told, the boiling does nothing - it is all about the soak! Here is a link telling you more: https://tanmanbaseballfan.com/2020/0...xtensions.html

[DHogan]

Amazing stuff.

[RCMcKenzie]

Nice cards and write-up, Tanner. I have to say that yesterday, when I first read this, I assumed it was a George Plimpton style Sidd Finch story. I still remember my Dad handing me the SI story at the dinner table on the Thursday before April 1. After reading the article, I looked up in disbelief and confusion and my parents pointed to the release date on the cover. Congrats

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by RCMcKenzie

Nice cards and write-up, Tanner. I have to say that yesterday, when I first read this, I assumed it was a George Plimpton style Sidd Finch story. I still remember my Dad handing me the SI story at the dinner table on the Thursday before April 1. After reading the article, I looked up in disbelief and confusion and my parents pointed to the release date on the cover. Congrats

It is funny you mention that - I'm notorious for doing April Fools write ups. Here are some I've done over the years:

https://tanmanbaseballfan.com/2019/0...requested.html

https://tanmanbaseballfan.com/2015/0...-gone-too.html

https://tanmanbaseballfan.com/2014/0...nd-reason.html

https://tanmanbaseballfan.com/2012/0...-hilarity.html

[Jason19th]

Regarding who cut out the Washington there is a very good chance that this was done a hundred and fifty years ago. During that period the document was thought to have little or no value and cuts were done to make them easier to display .

[68Hawk]

Originally Posted by Jason19th

Regarding who cut out the Washington there is a very good chance that this was done a hundred and fifty years ago. During that period the document was thought to have little or no value and cuts were done to make them easier to display .

Agree completely.