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cmokingPaul, thanks for the interesting tidbit, its always nice to hear of firsthand accounts. Did you buy chance buy/sell/trade with Lionel Carter? Any interesting stories?
In the other thread, Dennis provided this link to a story written by George Vrecheck on Lionel Carter: http://oldbaseball.com/refs/carter/lionelcarter.html
From this section, I figured he started collecting E and T cards shortly after WWII...but it doesn't answer the more interesting question (at least more interesting to me) of "when did he stop collecting and buying?"
"After the war Carter moved to Chicago. In 1946, John D. Wagner sent Carter a significant collection of early tobacco cards after learning of Carter’s interest in cards and his war record. Carter politely declined the gift and sent the cards back. But in time he was able to trade with Wagner and others so that he worked backward in completing tobacco and candy sets from the early 1900s. This time it was harder for Carter to get the mint condition cards that he preferred. He couldn’t buy them as they were issued. "