NonSports Forum

Net54baseball.com
Welcome to Net54baseball.com. These forums are devoted to both Pre- and Post- war baseball cards and vintage memorabilia, as well as other sports. There is a separate section for Buying, Selling and Trading - the B/S/T area!! If you write anything concerning a person or company your full name needs to be in your post or obtainable from it. . Contact the moderator at leon@net54baseball.com should you have any questions or concerns. When you click on links to eBay on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network. Enjoy!
Net54baseball.com
Net54baseball.com
ebay GSB
T206s on eBay
Babe Ruth Cards on eBay
t206 Ty Cobb on eBay
Ty Cobb Cards on eBay
Lou Gehrig Cards on eBay
Baseball T201-T217 on eBay
Baseball E90-E107 on eBay
T205 Cards on eBay
Baseball Postcards on eBay
Goudey Cards on eBay
Baseball Memorabilia on eBay
Baseball Exhibit Cards on eBay
Baseball Strip Cards on eBay
Baseball Baking Cards on eBay
Sporting News Cards on eBay
Play Ball Cards on eBay
Joe DiMaggio Cards on eBay
Mickey Mantle Cards on eBay
Bowman 1951-1955 on eBay
Football Cards on eBay

Go Back   Net54baseball.com Forums > Net54baseball Main Forum - WWII & Older Baseball Cards > Net54baseball Vintage (WWII & Older) Baseball Cards & New Member Introductions

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 01-27-2017, 12:35 AM
trdcrdkid's Avatar
trdcrdkid trdcrdkid is offline
David Kathman
member
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 1,554
Default Hobby history: Card dealers of the 1960s: James T. Elder (+ hobby drama, 1968-69)

In my most recent hobby history post, on Gar Miller (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=234348), darkhorse9 asked if I could write something about another mail-order dealer, Jim Elder of Odessa, Florida. Elder frequently advertised in hobby publications of the mid-to-late 1960s (as James T. Elder), and one of his ads sparked an exchange that in many ways epitomized the collecting culture of the late 1960s -- when the hobby was starting to grow more quickly and prices were rising, but card conventions had not yet arrived on the scene, and it was still a fairly insular subculture in many ways.

First, let me give a little background before I post any of Elder's ads. Throughout the 1950s and most of the 60s, the hobby of collecting baseball cards was dominated by kids and teenagers, with a relatively small number of adult men, most of whom felt a need to keep a low profile because it was considered weird. The main hobby publications of the late 1950s and early 1960s were mostly published by men born in the early 20th century: Card Comments (1958-1961) by Gordon Taylor and The Card Collector (1959-1964) by Woody Gelman, both aimed at children and teens, and Sport Fan (1951-1961) by Bob Jaspersen and Card Collector's Bulletin by Charles Bray, both aimed at adults. The one exception was The Sport Hobbyist, founded by Charles Brooks in 1956 when he was in high school, and containing a mixture of serious hobby research for adult collectors and articles aimed at younger collectors.

All of these publications struggled to stay afloat, whether due to financial reasons (as with Card Comments and The Card Collector, as I detailed in this post: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=233392) or due to personal problems (for Sport Fan, Bob Jaspersen's health problems; for The Sport Hobbyist, Charles Brooks and Laverne Isenberg's military service). As I mentioned in the post linked immediately above, the hobby went through a period of stagnation in the early to mid-1960s, and a whole series of hobby publications launched during this period, only to fold within a year or two. Unlike the earlier publications noted above, these were mostly published and edited by young men, primarily high school or college age. (I've posted articles from some of these publications, and may write more about some of them sometime.) One publication that lasted longer than most was The Sports Trader, launched by Richard Burns in September 1964, which quickly grew to have the largest circulation in the hobby. James T. Elder was a regular advertiser; below is his ad from the April 1965 issue (volume 1, no. 6), as an example. At this point he was mostly dealing in publications, and he had a 20-page price list that he would send to anyone who asked, as seen in the ad.



But even this successful hobby paper ran into problems. In April 1966, Burns changed the format of The Sports Trader from typewritten and mimeographed to typeset and printed on newsprint, but the costs proved to be more than he had anticipated. Then he was called up by the Army National Guard and had to suspend publication for several months, since it was a one-man operation, like basically all the hobby papers at the time. (Military service was a common threat to hobby publications, given the demographics of the publishers. In July 1967, Sports Collector's Journal was launched by Steve Mitchell, a member of this board (hi, Steve!) right after he graduated from high school, and it published a lot of great articles before folding a couple of years later when Steve went into the military.)

Richard Burns changed The Sports Trader back to a mimeographed publication with the September 1967 issue, and for a while it did very well, with some issues surpassing 50 pages. James T. Elder continued to advertise pretty regularly, now with a wider variety of material. Below are the four full-page ads he had in the January 1968 issue of The Sports Trader, including one devoted to his set of 950 postcard photos and one devoted to baseball cards, including T3s for $4 each, E105s for $2.50 each, T206s at 10 for $3.50, and T210s at 10 for $20. He had several different price lists, which he was now charging for.






In February 1968, one month after the above ads appeared, a new hobby publication launched: Sports Collectors' News, edited by Mike Bondarenko, who was 16 years old but wrote like someone older than that. SCN was mimeographed like The Sports Trader, and the two papers became significant rivals, both of them regularly publishing letters to the editor that could often get lengthy and opinionated. Bad blood soon developed between Burns and Bondarenko, partly because SCN had an anonymous columnist named "The Old Prospector" who wrote snarky commentary about rival publications, including The Sports Trader, and got under Burns's skin. But the two men also had different philosophies: Bondarenko didn't like rising prices in the hobby and made a point of saying that he operated SCN on a non-profit basis, while Burns saw himself as a capitalist running a business, and thought that sellers should be able to charge whatever prices the market would bear. It didn't help that Burns tended to take offense easily at perceived slights. This resulted in a lot of drama between the two publications in 1968-69, with a good illustration being an exchange stemming from one of James T. Elder's ads.

In the November 1968 Sports Trader, Elder had three full-page ads: one for back issues of sports hobby publications, one for cards and publications (including T206s and 1940 Play Balls), and one for his baseball postcard photos, which now numbered 1400 different. Note that he was selling T206 Hall of Famers for $1 to $2.50, as opposed to 35 cents for commons. He also had several smaller ads for autographs (which I didn't scan), and on the back page he had an ad for his Sport List #34, for publications, and his Sport Card List #86 and his Sport Card Auction #7.






Collector John Gondek saw Elder's ad for old hobby publications and got very excited. He made a list of the ones he wanted, but when he totaled them up, it came to $159.75, way more than he had bargained for. Suffering from sticker shock, he wrote an indignant article and sent it to Mike Bondarenko, with a copy also going to Richard Burns. Burns wrote a reply defending Elder's pricing practices, sending it to both Gondek and Bondarenko, and Gondek then wrote a rebuttal to Burns's reply. Bondarenko published all three letters in the January 1969 Sports Collectors' News with some commentary framing it as "The Great Debate".





In retrospect, it's not too hard to see here the seeds of the issues that would lead to the hobby's explosive growth in the following decade. The baby boomers who had collected baseball cards as kids in the 1950s were now older, many of them in college, with the oldest of them now (in 1968) graduating from college and earning money, if we define the start of the baby boom as 1946. That resulted in gradually increasing demand for cards and rising prices, and that trend would accelerate in the 1970s as nostalgia for the 1950s became popular (see: Happy Days), and more people who had collected cards back then had money to spend. Of course, that wasn't the only reason for the collecting boom and rising prices of the 1970s (and then the 1980s), but it seems pretty clear to me that demographics played a part.
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 01-27-2017, 12:46 AM
nsaddict's Avatar
nsaddict nsaddict is offline
Richard L.
Member
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 417
Default

Great reading, thanks for posting! T206 Cobb 1.25
__________________
Rich@rd Lap@int
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 01-27-2017, 01:02 AM
Andy Sandler Andy Sandler is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: California
Posts: 1,883
Default Jim Elder

I bought my first T206 baseball card from Jim Elder of Odessa, Florida in 1973 as a 13 year old. It was an Otto Knabe and it cost me 50 cents. I bought (5) T206's for $2.50 but I guess Jim only had one in stock so I got $2 credit. I remember my Dad teasing me that I would never get the credit in the future.
He was wrong!
P.S. I still have the old mimeographed for sale lists that Jim Elder sent me---many fond memories!
Regards, Andy Sandler andy@allsportsauctions.com
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 01-27-2017, 07:24 AM
Hot Springs Bathers Hot Springs Bathers is offline
Mike Dugan
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 1,052
Default

About two years ago I noticed some really great older college football programs for sale on eBay from a pair of seller IDs with Elder1 and Elder2 or something close to that. They were from Odessa, Florida. Is Jim still going or is/was this family selling off material?
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 01-27-2017, 08:17 AM
darkhorse9 darkhorse9 is offline
Mark
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Knoxville, TN
Posts: 829
Default

Andy

I'd love to see some of those 1970's price lists. That's where I got my first "vintage cards" (1951 Bowman Johnny WyrosteK).

I remember he was always pushing the Pacific Coast league Popcorn Cards. Never got any of those. I wondered for years what those were.
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 01-27-2017, 08:28 AM
trdcrdkid's Avatar
trdcrdkid trdcrdkid is offline
David Kathman
member
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 1,554
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hot Springs Bathers View Post
About two years ago I noticed some really great older college football programs for sale on eBay from a pair of seller IDs with Elder1 and Elder2 or something close to that. They were from Odessa, Florida. Is Jim still going or is/was this family selling off material?
I neglected to mention in the original post that Elder appeared in the 1958 Sport Fan Who's Who as a 16-year-old student. That means he was born about 1942, and could very well still be active in the hobby. I bet that's him on eBay.

Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old 01-29-2017, 06:27 AM
Leon's Avatar
Leon Leon is offline
Leon
peasant/forum owner
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: near Dallas
Posts: 34,196
Default

More great hobby history. Thanks David!!
__________________
Leon Luckey
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old 03-07-2017, 02:50 PM
Rich Klein Rich Klein is offline
Rich Klein
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Plano Tx
Posts: 4,475
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hot Springs Bathers View Post
About two years ago I noticed some really great older college football programs for sale on eBay from a pair of seller IDs with Elder1 and Elder2 or something close to that. They were from Odessa, Florida. Is Jim still going or is/was this family selling off material?
The last I heard it was still Mr. Elder

Rich
__________________
Look for our show listings in the Net 54 Calendar section
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old 03-07-2017, 08:27 PM
Jason's Avatar
Jason Jason is offline
Jason Wells
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Richmond,Va
Posts: 2,682
Default

Im not sure how I missed this the first time around as I really enjoy these posts. That was a interesting read and perspective from earlier days of the hobby. Thanks David.

Last edited by Jason; 03-07-2017 at 08:27 PM.
Reply With Quote
Reply



Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Hobby history: Card dealers of the early 1960s, part 1: Taylor vs. Gelman trdcrdkid Net54baseball Vintage (WWII & Older) Baseball Cards & New Member Introductions 25 09-14-2021 02:04 PM
Hobby history: Card dealers of the 1960s, part 2: Yeko and Oreck trdcrdkid Net54baseball Vintage (WWII & Older) Baseball Cards & New Member Introductions 38 01-24-2017 06:41 AM
Hobby history: Card dealers of the 1950s trdcrdkid Net54baseball Vintage (WWII & Older) Baseball Cards & New Member Introductions 21 01-01-2017 02:45 PM
Card Collectors Bulletin and early hobby history (in Sport Fan) trdcrdkid Net54baseball Vintage (WWII & Older) Baseball Cards & New Member Introductions 1 04-30-2016 09:31 PM
Card Collector's Bulletin, 8/1/69: Lionel Carter, hobby history trdcrdkid Net54baseball Vintage (WWII & Older) Baseball Cards & New Member Introductions 4 03-03-2016 08:39 AM


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:43 AM.


ebay GSB