Posted By:
Erick LewinHello again everyone,
I've been reading the threads on this site now for the past wekk or so and i must say this is a great forum, with some very respectable enthusiasts that post hear, it seems like. I noticed that everyone here is pretty close knit and people like to know who they're talking to, so i included my last name this time. I'm still learning more about the really old stuff, im somewhat knowledgable but am really more into it now with my recent Fleischmann Aquisition and the finding of this forum. I also noticed that you guys like to hear the stories behind people's cards, so here's mine: (i love talking about them, the problem is most of my friends aren't into it)
How i got the Fleischmanns:
I would guess that the first time i saw the cards i was between the ages of 8-10, not sure exactly what age. I went to my greatgrandparents house with my parents who were both almost or at 90 years of age at the time, in long island. On my way to their house i remember my father told me that great-grandpa had some old cards and baseball "pictures". When i got there we all just started talking about different things and i saw how my grandparents kept EVERYTHING. They even had a newspaper clipping from when the Titanic sunk.
After a little while i got the courage to ask my greatgrandfather if i could see his baseball cards. He said sure, and got up and walked to the back room where he kept them in a filing cabinet. He opened it up and pulled out a really old cardboard candy box, circa 1910-1916 i would estimate. We walked back to the room with my family and he handed me the box. I opened it up and was amazed. This was when i was just geting into baseball cards but only had new cards, my oldest was probably my 1985 topps McGwire RC at the time.
There was a stack of black and white, oversized cards, that were more like pictures to me with nothing written on the back and no real card set identification, only the underwood & underwood copyright. There were more than 170 of these "pictures" that had been cut on the bottom where a dotted line was. I looked through these and was fascinated by the age of them and the pictures of the players, and also the "old cardboard smell".
However, i noticed that he also had about a handful of the Cracker Jack cards, which i later found out to be 1915 rather than 1914, highlighted by 2 Connie Macks. At first i was more interested in the few Cracker Jacks because i knew what they were and had some idea of the value of them at the time. I had absolutely no idea what the other cards were.
After i looked through them all, my family left and i said thanks and goodbye. I didn't ask for any of the cards because i didn't want to rude.
After that initial visit and viewing of the cards, i was yearning to go back and see them again. Probably about a year or two later i went back with my whole family to visit with them again.
This time i couldn't wait and immediately asked to see the cards. I went and got them with him in the other room and came abck and looked through them. This time i also brought a new card myself to show him, a 1993 Flair Wave of the Future of Jeremy Burnitz! This was in 1993 which would have made me 11 i guess and i thought the Flair set was a really beautiful set and i wanted to show my great grandfather how cards had changed. I showed it to him and told him to keep the Burnitz card and asked if i could have one of his old cards. He was somewhat reluctant, He hesitated slightly but then said i could take one of the Connie Mack cracker jacks, which he had 2 of, and said i could take a couple of the black and white ones that he had doubles of. He also told me that the black and white cards were from bread , and that he got them out of packages of bread as a kid. I think he also mentioned that he cut off the coupons, but i dont remember exactly what he said. He actually said that he thought they were from Butter-Krust Bread, but he might have been mistaken, since butter-krust issued a different set from another year. I was curious if Butter-Krust was a brand of the Fleischmann Bakery though, that im not sure of.
Anyway i walked out of there that day when i was 11 with about 15-19 of the Fleischmanns that he had doubles of. The best one i got was Edd Rousch, who i later saw was a HOFer, along with the Mack cracker jack.
I did research on the set for years before the internet was big as a young kid but never found out what those cards actually were until a few months ago when i got the rest of them and found them online by chance (thanks to Old Cardboard site).
anyway,I went back there a couple more times before he died and looked at his cards. Then he died around when i was about 14-15 years old i think.
After that when i went back to visit my greatgrandmother, who lived up until this past Summer (99 or 100yrs old!), i think i might have saw them once, im not sure. I remember the last time i asked to see the cards i remember walking back to the room with her to get them and she opened the filing cabinet and they weren't there! I was very upset but didn't say anything. she didn't know what had happened to them.
I thought the cards were either lost, stolen by a relative, or thrown away. I never heard about the cards again and didn't actively search to find out what the cards were that i had.
However, my grandfather (not greatgrandfather), said that if he ever found the cards, he'd give them to me since i showed such an interest in them.
Then this past summer my greatgrandma died. About a month and half later, out of the blue, on my first break from college this fall, my dad told me that grandma found grandpas old cards and she'd give them to me. he told me to just drive up there. So, i immediately hopped in my car and drove up there and asked about them. She showed the cards to me and it brought back all the old memories and, now being more educated, i knew about a lot more of the players too and i was really excited. She thought to keep them for a while because she had wanted to look through them as well, but then relented and handed them to me because she didn't know anything about them. I said thanks and left to go home and immediately showed my brothers friend who's into them to and we sorted them all out by the players into stacks of cards i had doubles of etc... and then we started researching them online and i eventually found out what they were on the oldcardboard website under the "D" Bakery issues. I knew it was from around 1915-1916 and clicked on the Fleischmann link and saw a picture of the johnny evers card, and i realized i had that card. As they say, the rest is history and i'm trying to locate the rest of this set.
I apologize for the longevity of this post, but if you read up to here i guess you were interested. I figure at least a couple people might be interested in the story. (on a side not i noticed that i forgot to post in my initial post here that im also missing the TOM GRIFFITH card).
Also, dont think i've forgotten, i will try and post scans of some of my Fleischmanns as soon as im back from college.
Sorry for the length of this post and thanks for everyones help so far, this is a great site
Sincerely-Erick Lewin