trdcrdkid
12-16-2016, 12:21 AM
In 1949, Leaf issued a set of 98 baseball cards, skip-numbered between 1 and 168. (The cards are dated either 1948 or 1949, but they were all issued sometime after June 1949, when Buck Barker wrote an overview of sports gum card issues that did not mention Leaf baseball: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=223647.) The first 49 cards issued were relatively common, but the other 49 are very scarce, apparently because they were pulled from the market when Bowman sued Leaf over the rights to picture major-league players on gum cards. Lionel Carter, 31 years old and a major card collector by that time, collected the first series of 49 when they came out, but didn't even know about the other 49 until years later.
The 49 common cards in the 1949 Leaf baseball set were known to the card collecting hobby early on, but the other 49 were only discovered gradually in the course of the 1950s and 60s, with the last 8 of them only being discovered and checklisted in 1969, twenty years after the set was issued. I've gone through my collection of hobby publications to trace how and when the rare cards were discovered, and have posted the relevant articles below. I've previously posted a few of these, but this brings them all together in one place. To me, this is an interesting example of the type of research that was going on in the hobby in the 1950s and 1960s, when a lot of the information and checklists that we take for granted today were still being worked out.
The first descriptions of the 1949 Leaf baseball set in the hobby literature appeared in the October 1956 Sport Hobbyist, when hobby legends Walter Corson and Buck Barker wrote separate articles about them. Corson's article was about all the Leaf card issues of 1948-49; he gives the numbers of the 49 common baseball cards, then gives the numbers of 8 of the rare cards, saying that he doesn't know whether anybody else has any. (The second page, which I did not scan, is about the rare Pirate set.) Barker's article includes a checklist of the 49 common cards, but he makes no mention of the rare cards, which he apparently did not know about, though he does discuss the rare premiums for this set.
In the May 1957 Sport Fan, Lionel Carter wrote a column about postwar baseball gum cards that included a paragraph about 1949 Leaf baseball. He also lists the numbers of the 49 common cards, but like Barker, he apparently did not know about the existence of the rare cards. I've posted this article previously (in this post: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=227125), but I'm including it below the Corson and Barker articles.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0001.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0002.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20160818_0014.jpg
In the January-February 1960 issue of Sport Fan, Carter wrote a front-page article announcing that Lloyd Hendrick of Oklahoma "reports knowing a young collector who has 33 unlisted cards of this set!!!" That article (which I previously posted in this thread: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=227454) is below. He mentions the 8 rare cards owned by Corson, so he must have read Corson's 1956 article by now. The 33 new cards include Corson's 8, plus 25 others. Carter further reports that the "young collector" had five misprint cards, including three with previously unknown players on the front (Harry Brecheen, Henry Majeski, Danny Murtaugh) but different backs. So the checklist provided by Carter lists 80 cards (49 + 33 + 3 with unknown numbers).
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20160823_0015.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20160823_0016.jpg
A few months later, in the September 1960 issue of Card Comments, Thomas Harden wrote an article about the 1949 Leaf baseball set that was obviously based on Carter's article, or on a second-hand account of it. He says that only 80 cards in the set have been found, and that there are five error cards, just as reported by Carter. However, he didn't appear to have Carter's checklist, since he only listed the 28 cards that his boss (card dealer Gordon Taylor) had in stock, and asked readers to send in others. The following month in the October 1960 issue he listed 13 "Additions to Leaf Gum List", and in the January 1961 issue came "Rest of Leaf Gum Baseball Checklist", with 28 cards, 20 of which had already appeared on the two previous lists. The resulting checklist included just the 49 common cards. But the March 1961 issue included a list of 25 additional 1949 Leaf baseball cards, sent in by Larry Frisch of Stevens Point, Wisconsin (see the last scan below). These were all rare numbers, the same 25 "new" rare numbers reported by Carter in his Sport Fan article. This shows that Frisch was the "young collector" who had reported the new rare numbers to Lloyd Hendrick, and through him to Carter.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0003.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0004.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0005.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0006.jpg
A few years later, collector Rich Egan was doing a lot of important research on many different card sets. In 1965 he began writing a column called "Egan's Alley", originally in The Sports Trader and subsequently appearing in various other hobby publications, in which he presented the results of his research and solicited feedback from readers. His very first column, in the July 1965 Sports Trader, included a checklist of 1949 Leaf baseball. He gives credit to Buck Barker for providing the checklist, but Barker got it from Carter's 1960 Sport Fan article, except that this version only includes last names and distinguishes the common cards by marking them with an asterisk.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0007.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0008.jpg
Egan's next column, in the August 1965 Sports Trader, has some "Additions and Corrections" surrounding the Leaf checklist. James McLean had told him that Lionel Carter's Sport Fan article was the original source of the checklist, and Egan had also gone through Card Comments and found Harden's original article and the followup article with the 25 additional cards from Larry Fritsch. Egan contacted Fritsch, who provided some corrections and the information that Doby was #138. The Doby number was also reported by Roland Villard and Richard Ockomon, implying that they also had the card.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0009.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0010.jpg
Finally, in his column in the September 1965 Sports Trader, Egan reported that Jim Nowell (who four years later would host the first real sports collectors' convention) had mentioned the existence of five additional numbers (33, 142, 143, 149, and 165), though Nowell did not know what players were on those cards. Nowell thought Fritsch might have the cards, though Egan's later columns are silent on this. As it turns out, unbeknownst to Egan, #142 and 149 were the Murtaugh and Majeski cards that had appeared without numbers in Carter's 1960 list (and Egan's 1965 one).
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0011.jpg
Three years later later in the June 1968 Ballcard Collector, Egan reported that Jim Elder, a dealer-collector of sports publications as well as cards, had found four new 1949 Leaf baseball cards. Egan said that this brought the total known to 91, but I'm not sure how this squares with what he said in his earlier articles above. Egan suggested that Elder going to auction the cards, but if he did so in any of the hobby publications of that period, I haven't been able to find it.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0012.jpg
Finally, in the January 1969 Sports Collectors' News (see below), Egan announced that Goodwin Goldfaden had found eight new 1949 Leaf baseball cards, bringing the total known to 98 -- the same number known today. The eight new cards included three of the five that Jim Nowell had reported rumors of back in 1965 (33, 143, 165). The updated checklist accompanying the article includes the other two numbers reported by Nowell, 142 (Murtaugh) and 149 (Majeski), so Egan had obviously figured out that those players (known since Carter's list) correspond to those numbers. The new total of 98 cards implies that there must have been 90 known before Goodfaden's discovery, but Egan had said the previous June that there were 91 known. I don't have the time or inclination right now to resolve that discrepancy. Egan said that Goldfaden was going to auction the cards in the next issue of Card Collector's Bulletin, and indeed, the February 1, 1969 issue of CCB has a full-page ad from Goldfaden (see below) that includes a bunch of 1949 Leaf baseball rare numbers. He was offering them in trade rather than auction, and he must have found some takers, because there is no mention of the cards in any later ads by Goldfaden.
This last article and ad came almost 20 years after the 1949 Leaf baseball cards were issued to the public. It took that long for the hobby to figure out how many cards there were beyond the common 49 and produce an accurate checklist. The information came in fits and starts: 8 cards mentioned by Walter Corson in 1956, another 25 discovered by Larry Fritsch by 1960, rumors of 5 more reported by Egan in 1965, four found by James Elder in 1968, and the last 8 found by Goodwin Goldfaden in 1969. Today, when we can pick up the Standard Catalog or look on oldcardboard.com and get accurate checklists and information about even the most obscure vintage sets, it's easy to forget how much research and hard work was done back in the 1960s to figure out that information for the first time.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0013.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0014.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0015.jpg
The 49 common cards in the 1949 Leaf baseball set were known to the card collecting hobby early on, but the other 49 were only discovered gradually in the course of the 1950s and 60s, with the last 8 of them only being discovered and checklisted in 1969, twenty years after the set was issued. I've gone through my collection of hobby publications to trace how and when the rare cards were discovered, and have posted the relevant articles below. I've previously posted a few of these, but this brings them all together in one place. To me, this is an interesting example of the type of research that was going on in the hobby in the 1950s and 1960s, when a lot of the information and checklists that we take for granted today were still being worked out.
The first descriptions of the 1949 Leaf baseball set in the hobby literature appeared in the October 1956 Sport Hobbyist, when hobby legends Walter Corson and Buck Barker wrote separate articles about them. Corson's article was about all the Leaf card issues of 1948-49; he gives the numbers of the 49 common baseball cards, then gives the numbers of 8 of the rare cards, saying that he doesn't know whether anybody else has any. (The second page, which I did not scan, is about the rare Pirate set.) Barker's article includes a checklist of the 49 common cards, but he makes no mention of the rare cards, which he apparently did not know about, though he does discuss the rare premiums for this set.
In the May 1957 Sport Fan, Lionel Carter wrote a column about postwar baseball gum cards that included a paragraph about 1949 Leaf baseball. He also lists the numbers of the 49 common cards, but like Barker, he apparently did not know about the existence of the rare cards. I've posted this article previously (in this post: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=227125), but I'm including it below the Corson and Barker articles.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0001.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0002.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20160818_0014.jpg
In the January-February 1960 issue of Sport Fan, Carter wrote a front-page article announcing that Lloyd Hendrick of Oklahoma "reports knowing a young collector who has 33 unlisted cards of this set!!!" That article (which I previously posted in this thread: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=227454) is below. He mentions the 8 rare cards owned by Corson, so he must have read Corson's 1956 article by now. The 33 new cards include Corson's 8, plus 25 others. Carter further reports that the "young collector" had five misprint cards, including three with previously unknown players on the front (Harry Brecheen, Henry Majeski, Danny Murtaugh) but different backs. So the checklist provided by Carter lists 80 cards (49 + 33 + 3 with unknown numbers).
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20160823_0015.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20160823_0016.jpg
A few months later, in the September 1960 issue of Card Comments, Thomas Harden wrote an article about the 1949 Leaf baseball set that was obviously based on Carter's article, or on a second-hand account of it. He says that only 80 cards in the set have been found, and that there are five error cards, just as reported by Carter. However, he didn't appear to have Carter's checklist, since he only listed the 28 cards that his boss (card dealer Gordon Taylor) had in stock, and asked readers to send in others. The following month in the October 1960 issue he listed 13 "Additions to Leaf Gum List", and in the January 1961 issue came "Rest of Leaf Gum Baseball Checklist", with 28 cards, 20 of which had already appeared on the two previous lists. The resulting checklist included just the 49 common cards. But the March 1961 issue included a list of 25 additional 1949 Leaf baseball cards, sent in by Larry Frisch of Stevens Point, Wisconsin (see the last scan below). These were all rare numbers, the same 25 "new" rare numbers reported by Carter in his Sport Fan article. This shows that Frisch was the "young collector" who had reported the new rare numbers to Lloyd Hendrick, and through him to Carter.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0003.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0004.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0005.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0006.jpg
A few years later, collector Rich Egan was doing a lot of important research on many different card sets. In 1965 he began writing a column called "Egan's Alley", originally in The Sports Trader and subsequently appearing in various other hobby publications, in which he presented the results of his research and solicited feedback from readers. His very first column, in the July 1965 Sports Trader, included a checklist of 1949 Leaf baseball. He gives credit to Buck Barker for providing the checklist, but Barker got it from Carter's 1960 Sport Fan article, except that this version only includes last names and distinguishes the common cards by marking them with an asterisk.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0007.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0008.jpg
Egan's next column, in the August 1965 Sports Trader, has some "Additions and Corrections" surrounding the Leaf checklist. James McLean had told him that Lionel Carter's Sport Fan article was the original source of the checklist, and Egan had also gone through Card Comments and found Harden's original article and the followup article with the 25 additional cards from Larry Fritsch. Egan contacted Fritsch, who provided some corrections and the information that Doby was #138. The Doby number was also reported by Roland Villard and Richard Ockomon, implying that they also had the card.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0009.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0010.jpg
Finally, in his column in the September 1965 Sports Trader, Egan reported that Jim Nowell (who four years later would host the first real sports collectors' convention) had mentioned the existence of five additional numbers (33, 142, 143, 149, and 165), though Nowell did not know what players were on those cards. Nowell thought Fritsch might have the cards, though Egan's later columns are silent on this. As it turns out, unbeknownst to Egan, #142 and 149 were the Murtaugh and Majeski cards that had appeared without numbers in Carter's 1960 list (and Egan's 1965 one).
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0011.jpg
Three years later later in the June 1968 Ballcard Collector, Egan reported that Jim Elder, a dealer-collector of sports publications as well as cards, had found four new 1949 Leaf baseball cards. Egan said that this brought the total known to 91, but I'm not sure how this squares with what he said in his earlier articles above. Egan suggested that Elder going to auction the cards, but if he did so in any of the hobby publications of that period, I haven't been able to find it.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0012.jpg
Finally, in the January 1969 Sports Collectors' News (see below), Egan announced that Goodwin Goldfaden had found eight new 1949 Leaf baseball cards, bringing the total known to 98 -- the same number known today. The eight new cards included three of the five that Jim Nowell had reported rumors of back in 1965 (33, 143, 165). The updated checklist accompanying the article includes the other two numbers reported by Nowell, 142 (Murtaugh) and 149 (Majeski), so Egan had obviously figured out that those players (known since Carter's list) correspond to those numbers. The new total of 98 cards implies that there must have been 90 known before Goodfaden's discovery, but Egan had said the previous June that there were 91 known. I don't have the time or inclination right now to resolve that discrepancy. Egan said that Goldfaden was going to auction the cards in the next issue of Card Collector's Bulletin, and indeed, the February 1, 1969 issue of CCB has a full-page ad from Goldfaden (see below) that includes a bunch of 1949 Leaf baseball rare numbers. He was offering them in trade rather than auction, and he must have found some takers, because there is no mention of the cards in any later ads by Goldfaden.
This last article and ad came almost 20 years after the 1949 Leaf baseball cards were issued to the public. It took that long for the hobby to figure out how many cards there were beyond the common 49 and produce an accurate checklist. The information came in fits and starts: 8 cards mentioned by Walter Corson in 1956, another 25 discovered by Larry Fritsch by 1960, rumors of 5 more reported by Egan in 1965, four found by James Elder in 1968, and the last 8 found by Goodwin Goldfaden in 1969. Today, when we can pick up the Standard Catalog or look on oldcardboard.com and get accurate checklists and information about even the most obscure vintage sets, it's easy to forget how much research and hard work was done back in the 1960s to figure out that information for the first time.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0013.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0014.jpg
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/dkathman1/IMG_20161214_0015.jpg