Quote:
Originally Posted by todeen
First, I'm a Reds fan. I collect as much memorabilia as I do cards. I'm a history teacher, and I got into pre-war about 9 years ago, and I started learning about the 1939-40 Cincinnati Reds. I always wanted my display to feel like a museum. I saw the set and fell in love. It's beautiful. I always thought the set was team issued, but Chris Gamble shared an advertisement about a year ago that the set was produced and distributed by the local dairy company. A new card would arrive with the milk! The lesser known players are the hardest to find and command prices similar to or higher than the stars. The Jim Weaver pictured below is the only one I've ever seen, and I paid as much for it as I did the others. Regardless, I have only once seen a Johnny Vander Meer portrait; I have seen Johnny's action shot a couple times. The portrait was autographed, and a member of this site owns it. I collect both series, but I only have two 1939 cards. The only way I can tell them apart is by reading the description on the back. The description was updated to mention accomplishments from 1938. Finally, I'm about to sell my partial set. I bought a T206 red Cobb, and my set, among other things, is going to help me pay for it.       
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Super collection and great cards from such a tough set. Sorry to hear you may be parting with a portion of the collection to fund the purchase of another card, but it is of a T206 Cobb so can understand. And I now see those were listed in the old SCD catalogs under a caption of "Cincinnati Reds Team Issue" for the years 1938, 1939, and 1940. Your mention that these were actually prepared and distributed by a local Cincinnati dairy, and therefore maybe not a team issue at all, just shows how little we may actually know about a lot of the sets and items that we collect. It also shows that even when we have great resources for such information, like the SCD catalogs, you still can't always assume they are always 100% accurate and up to date. It is actually somewhat saddening that the catalog was discontinued as it was a great repository of knowledge all in one place, and the perfect source to find out about new discoveries and changes to what we collect. Thanks to the diligence and efforts of people like the late Bob Lemke, who used to be editor of the catalog, who would research and investigate new found information and details and then make the appropriate and warranted updates to the catalog each year. There really isn't anyone or any group that I'm aware of that is still keeping track of such changes, and updating and making it all available to the public, at least not at the volume and level of information that was in the SCD catalogs. Even revered and often quoted reference sources like Lew Lipset's card encyclopedia, or the Goodwin - Old Judge book by Jay, Joe, and Richard, have omissions and errors in them that weren't discovered or proven till after their publications. An udate to the descriptions of these W711 sets in the SCD catalogs would have been a great way to disseminate this info to the collecting public. Sadly, that isn't happening anymore.