Lionel Carter on T205s, 1956

[trdcrdkid]

One thing you notice in reading through old hobby publications from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s is how much Lionel Carter wrote about baseball cards back then. It seems like he wrote for just about every publication out there, on a wide variety of sets.

Here is an article about T205s that Carter wrote for the June 1956 Sport Card Journal. This was a monthly publication that Charles Brooks launched in May 1956, at the same time that he also launched The Sport Hobbyist. I'm not sure what the difference was supposed to be, other than The Sport Hobbyist having 16 pages and The Sport Card Journal having 20. I suspect that Brooks merged the two soon after this, because The Sport Hobbyist had a long life, lasting more than 20 years with several interruptions, but I have no idea what happened to The Sport Card Journal after the first two issues, which I have.

The second of these issues has Carter's article on T205s, which I've posted below. It's the earliest article I'm aware of that's specifically about T205s, unless there was something in Card Collectors Bulletin. The first page is mostly descriptive, but the second page gets into the variations and rarities, as Carter was aware of them in 1956. The only printing variation he knew about was the Dougherty red/white sock one, but of course there are several others, involving both the fronts and the backs of cards. He seems to have known about some, but not all, of the short prints.

[coolshemp]

Thank you! I enjoy reading these old articles...I was born in the wrong era.

[edhans]

Interesting that he doesn't list Hindu as a brand.

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by edhans

Interesting that he doesn't list Hindu as a brand.

He doesn't mention Broadleaf either. Those two brands are so rare in T205 that I don't think they were really recognized in the hobby for a long time. I'll have to check when I get home, but I don't think they were mentioned as T205 brands in most of the reference books from the mid-to-late 70s and early 80s.

[GasHouseGang]

Well since they're only around 5 cents each, maybe I'll pick some up.