Dec. 1957 Hobbies magazine: Lionel Carter on baseball cards, Sullivan on scorecards

[trdcrdkid]

The December 1957 issue of Hobbies magazine had a one-page history of baseball cards by Lionel Carter on page 124, illustrated with some cards and a picture of Lionel displaying some of his collection. This article was mentioned in Lionel Carter's entry in the 1958 Sport Fan Who's Who Directory of Collectors, which I posted here on the board almost a month ago, and which brass_rat commented on the other day: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=222091. It's more or less a condensation of some of the articles on the history of baseball cards that Carter had been writing for Sport Fan since 1955, which I'll try to post at some point. It's interesting that he thought that the "Fifth Cycle" of baseball cards was "in its dying stages". It also appears that he had written the article nine months to a year before it was published, since he talks about 1957 cards as being in the future.

On page 130 of the same issue was an article by John Sullivan about collecting scorecards, illustrated by an 1887 Boston scorecard with an Old Judge advertisement (like those on p. 112 of the Old Judge book, though this one isn't among the six illustrated there). Carter and Sullivan had been in charge of local arrangements for the "national sports collecting convention" that Sport Fan publisher Bob Jaspersen had tried to organize in Chicago in 1956, as I posted about here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=221393

Here are those December 1957 articles. Enjoy!

[Jason]

Thanks David I have been really enjoying the Lionel Carter writings. I also like the fact that almost 50 years after distribution, the Red Border set was still pretty unknown with the count at 500+. I wonder who first put together the checklist at 640? Great stuff.

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by Jason

Thanks David I have been really enjoying the Lionel Carter writings. I also like the fact that almost 50 years after distribution, the Red Border set was still pretty unknown with the count at 500+. I wonder who first put together the checklist at 640? Great stuff.

In the 1953 American Card Catalogue, T210 is listed as "over 500", and I'm sure that's where Carter got his number. In the 1960 ACC it's listed as "563 known", so somebody must have been trying to do a checklist in the interim, but I'm not sure who. Maybe Preston Orem, who started heavily collecting all kinds of T and N cards in 1956 and wrote various articles about them for hobby papers, some of which I've posted. But there were other people collecting T210s and other minor league cards, so I don't know.