Babe Ruth barnstorming card? Real or fantasy?
 

Can anyone identify the issue this card may be from? The picture is taken from a 1931 photo of the Universal Stars barnstorming team Ruth played on…Attachment 551443

Attachment 551444

Print pattern on front seems to be period. Note the town may not have been an official town…

Thanks!

never seen it...I suspect a modern fantasy card.

Fantasy, I feel like I saw similar posted some years ago.

Why fake this? There are way better Ruth images and cards out there. All things Babe Ruth, I guess.

Yes, it's from the "Joe Daly's Tavern" issue. Seriously, clever of them to use an antique typewriter font for the offer on the back, otherwise it's just another in the long line of yellowed fakes out of Ohio. That makes me only 99&9/10% certain it's a fake rather than 100%. Also, I don't think I've seen the photo before, which might knock it down to 99&8/10%. Where did you get it? I'm guessing eBay or Etsy or such.

It’s not mine trying to solve the mystery. Googled the photo, was on gottahaveit.com website. Cut from a larger photo.


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100% fantasy. There are quite a few versions of card with names type on the back like this - most are Ruth, Gehrig, and Cobb.

Personally, I always feel that typewriter font is more so a dead giveaway for a fake. Look at how each line is leaning differently which shows the card was manually placed for each line due to the size. For a small business owner it would have taken hours upon hours to complete just a small batch versus buying an inexpensive hand stamp to do a pile in a couple minutes. That and using the bicolor accounting ribbon which means a little shop that would rarely need red only gets half the use of a ribbon as they can’t flip it over for additional runs. Anything advertising based with hand type is suspect for me immediately.

I also love when these scammers put the name and address of an establishment selling alcohol on the back of the card WHEN PROHIBITION WAS STILL GOING ON.

If this picture was from 1931 and Prohibition ended in 1933 then this place was just ASKING to be raided if they were giving out cards like this.

David

I guess, but I'm not sure cranking out 100 of these for the owner to give out would take hours and hours of typing, more like a couple hours if you knew your way around a typewriter. Under this kind of circumstance, of course, no matter how long it took or when it was made, the card would never be regarded as a legitimate issue to be catalogued, etc., but merely a local fantasy promo card.

The picture, of course, could have been used anytime after 1931, including long after prohibition had ended.

There is no Plymouth Rhode Island to my knowledge.

Oops!

The typo is a classic scammer touch.

A common fantasy piece that people have probably lost thousands of dollars on, over the years.
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How would the hobby feel if there was a bar that really did print up their own little contemporary cards for free drinks and one featured the Babe?

There are lots of bars by me that have their own drink tokens made up for free drinks. If I ever own a bar I'm going to make my own cards like this and see how the hobby treats them in 100 years.

I know someone that had business cards cards printed with images of Wagner.

It's obvious it's a business card, but it's pretty cool. You have to figure, it's a great way to start a conversation about cards and things like that.

It'd be weird to be an electrician, plumber, handyman or what ever and start a conversation with a client about "hey, got any baseball cards?"

With the business card people may ask about it, then you can step up the conversation about baseball cards or other sports collectibles.

Maye we can start a thread about creating the best looking "fantasy" card.

It's just sad that people create these things with the intent to defraud.

Harry Coveleskie had these neat little cards made for his own cafe way back when. It's one of my favorite pieces in my collection:

https://live.staticflickr.com/4381/3...0bc6e57e_w.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/4406/3...7d74e5f6_w.jpg

After I retired I opened a seasonal business as a hobby. I had cards printed up with Ted Williams on one side.

Ever see one floating around somewhere?

I do think if you could show definitively that you have some kind of cool little contemporary 1930 Babe Ruth premium like a drink ticket with a picture of him in uniform on it there would be a nice little competitive market for it.

Illuminate it with a black light and see if it fluoresces. Then let us know if it glowed. That would be a really useful test.


To me, without using the light test, it just doesn't look right.

"Contemporary" being the all-important operative word here.

is this before or after he ate all the hotdogs?

The issue is going to be the slightest of forensic analysis will show it isn't circa 1930

and packs, here is one like yours but with a different back ..


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This, my point from the start.