Hobby history: Card dealers of the 1960s, part 2: Yeko and Oreck

[trdcrdkid]

In the first post of this series (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=233137), I discussed the first sports card dealers, particularly Sam Rosen, Woody Gelman, and Gordon B. Taylor, and their activities in the 1950s. In the second post (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=233392), I discussed the competition between Gelman and Taylor in the early 1960s. That ended with Taylor selling his business and shutting down his hobby magazine, Card Comments, and Gelman eventually shutting down his own magazine, The Card Collector, while his business, Card Collectors' Company, survived. In this post I'm going to write about a couple of the other major card dealers of the 1960s, Bruce Yeko and Marshall Oreck, and in particular their roles in one of the hobby's major changes in that decade -- the shift toward charging a premium for cards of star players.

As hard as it may be for us to believe today, in 1960 a contemporary card of Mickey Mantle, or a T206 of Ty Cobb, generally sold for the same amount as a common player, unless it was known to be harder to find than other cards in the set, like the T206 Honus Wagner and Eddie Plank. Scarcity was more or less the only determinant of a card's value, with a few exceptions here and there. As we saw at the end of my "Dealers of the 1950s" post linked above, the 1958 Topps card of Stan Musial, issued in the last series as #476, commanded a premium almost immediately -- Gordon Taylor was charging 10 cents for it in the August 1958 Card Comments (vs. 3 cents for all other cards in the set), and Card Collectors' Company was charging 5 cents for it in March 1959 (vs. 3 cents for other cards in the set). This despite the fact that the Musial card was actually more common than the other cards in the set, having been triple printed (along with the Mantle all-star card, #487). The high demand for this card was due to the fact that this was the first Topps card ever of Musial, and the first widely-distributed card of him since 1953 Bowman color.

However, the demand apparently didn't last. Three years later in its March 1, 1962 price list, Card Collectors' Company was no longer charging a premium for the 1958 Topps Musial, but they were charging 10 cents (vs. 4 cents for commons) for the newly issued 1962 cards of Roger Maris (#1) and Mickey Mantle (#200), who had battled to break Babe Ruth's home run record the previous season. A year later in the March 1, 1963 price list, CCC kept that price for the 1962 Maris and Mantle and charged the same amount for the new 1963 Maris and Mantle cards, while also charging $1.00 for the 1953 Bowman color Musial (vs. 15 cents for all other cards in that set). Those were the only individual sports cards from any year (1948-1963) for which Card Collectors' Company charged a premium in its 1962 or 1963 price lists, other than known scarcities like the 1952 Topps high numbers and the four 1958 short prints. (I posted the first pages of those 1962 and 1963 price lists at the end of my second post linked to above.) This situation would change within just a few years, and the main agents of that change were Bruce Yeko and Marshall Oreck.

First, consider Bruce Yeko (rhymes with "gecko"), a very interesting guy who is still alive and active today, though not in the card business -- for the past 40 years he has owned Original Cast Records, a record label that issues cast albums of obscure Broadway musicals, and he has seen over 10,000 such musicals, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. You can listen to an interview with Yeko from this past August, focused on his Broadway activities but also covering his card dealer days, here: https://behindthecurtainbroadwaysliv...cord-producer/. George Vrechek also interviewed him for SCD in 2011, and you can read that here: http://oldbaseball.com/refs/Bruce_Yeko.pdf.

Born in 1940, Yeko started buying and reselling cards in high school along with his childhood friend Jay Lerner, and eventually started buying boxes and cases of cards and putting together sets that he could sell. He named the business "Wholesale Cards" so it would sound more impressive, and he continued it part-time while attending the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee starting in 1958. The earliest ad of his that I've been able to find is a small one on page 18 of the February 1, 1959 Card Collector's Bulletin, during Yeko's freshman year in college. I posted that page last year in a different thread (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=218274), but here is just the ad. Note that checks were to be made payable to Lerner, and the misspelling "Distributers" in the company name, which would also appear in future ads.



In the August 1, 1959 CCB, Yeko had a full-page ad (below), a few pages after a quarter-page ad by a young "Lawrence C. Fritsch" of Stevens Point, Wisconsin (the earliest ad of his that I've seen, which I may post later). Yeko was selling single cards from all the Topps and Bowman baseball and football sets after 1950 (the same price for any card from a set), and from some non-sport sets. Below that is Yeko's ad from the August 1, 1961 CCB, this one more focused on recent cards and offering some sets in addition to the singles, including 1961 Topps baseball for $11.95.




In the spring of 1962, Yeko graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a degree in accounting, and applied for jobs with each of the "big seven" accounting firms (as they then were). He only applied for jobs in New York, because his goal was to move there and pursue his love of musical theater, working a job during the day and going to Broadway musicals at night, ideally while keeping his card business going part-time. Six of the accounting firms rejected him, but Touche Ross (now part of Deloitte) offered him a job in the Big Apple, so he moved there in the summer of 1962. But after nine months at the job, including one busy tax season, Yeko realized that he didn't like accounting and wasn't very good at it, so he quit, and starting in the summer of 1963 he made his card business into a full-time "day job" to pay for his Broadway habit. He began advertising more (including a full-page ad in each issue of Card Collector's Bulletin starting in August 1963), typed up a price list, and began sending out a monthly flyer highlighting the latest releases. Below is the front and back of Yeko's flyer dated September 15, 1963 (condensed into one image), and the first page of his four-page price list. Notice that he was still charging the same price for any card in each set, except for tougher series, error cards, and short prints from 1958 and 1961. Note also the plug for The Sports Gazette, a cheaply mimeographed hobby publication in which Yeko had been advertising since the March-April 1963 issue, and for which he wrote a "Mr. Answer Man" column in the first three issues of 1964.




When Yeko became a full-time card dealer in the summer of 1963, one of his main competitors was Woody Gelman and the Card Collectors' Company, though Yeko and Gelman were on friendly terms. His other major competitor was Marshall Oreck, who now owned Gordon B. Taylor's former inventory of cards. When Taylor went out of business in late 1961, he sold the cards to M. A. Kohler, who turned around and sold them to Oreck a year later. Oreck became a full-time dealer and went all out in terms of marketing, advertising widely and putting out a slick 24-page, 8.5"x11" price list in early 1963. Below is the cover and inside cover of that price list, along with the first page of the list itself. Oreck was charging a premium for team cards and checklists, as well as for tougher series and occasionally other cards, though it's sometimes hard to see why he was charging extra for certain cards and not for others. No cards from 1962 or 1961 Topps commanded a premium, while there were three in 1960 (Billy Pierce, Willie McCovey, and Mickey Mantle) and four in 1959 (Stan Musial, Yankees team, Harmon Killibrew, and Roy Campanella). From earlier years, the only non-scarce cards for which Oreck was charging extra were 1957 #'s 253-264 (?), 400 (Dodgers' Sluggers), and 407 (Yankee Power Hitters); 1956 #166 (Dodgers team); 1955 Topps #210 (Duke Snider); 1954 Topps #1 and 250 (Ted Williams); 1953 Bowman B&W #39 (Casey Stengel); 1953 Bowman color #32 (Stan Musial); and 1952 Bowman #196 (Musial). Those are mostly star cards, but lots of star cards in those sets are not included in this list.




In this first price list, Oreck also announced a Collectors' Directory, which was already in its second issue and was going to come out (he said) every three months. I have the third issue, which was apparently the last one, because Bruce Yeko was still selling it several years later. Below is the cover and the first page (condensed), including a listing for a young Mike Aronstein, future founder of TCMA.



Oreck's second price list from 1964 does not differ significantly from the first, except that some of the prices have gone up a little, and it includes the 1963 Topps and Bazooka cards. In 1963 Topps he was charging 3 cents for most cards, but 10 cents for teams and checklists, series 4 cards (#264-352), #120 (Roger Maris), #250 (Stan Musial), #368 (Ed Bailey), #375 (Ken Boyer), #380 (Ernie Banks), #382 (Ralph Houk), #401 (Jim Bouton), and #410 (Earl Battey). I can understand Maris, Musial, and Banks, but why these other guys, and not Mantle, Mays, Aaron, or Clemente?

It was Oreck's third price list, dated January 1, 1965, where he finally got his act together and began consistently charging extra for cards of big-name stars. Below are the relevant pages from that catalogue. He was charging extra for the biggest stars in all the Topps and Bowman sets, including Mantle and Mays, listing most of them by name rather than just by number. Amazingly (from our perspective), the one exception is the 1952 Topps high numbers, which he appears to have been selling for $1.00 each -- including Mantle, Robinson, Campanella, and the other stars in that series. Maybe he thought that since they were already selling for a premium, it wasn't fair to charge a double premium; or maybe he didn't have 52 Topps high numbers in stock consistently enough to worry about pricing individual cards.





While it might appear that things were going great for Oreck, he was actually looking to get out of the card business. His brother David had started a vacuum cleaner company in 1963, the same year that Marshall launched his card business, and Oreck vacuum cleaners were becoming so popular that the business was growing rapidly. Oreck offered to sell his 4 million card inventory to Bruce Yeko for $10,000, but Yeko initially declined. Eventually, though, Yeko accepted the offer in early 1966, and Marshall Oreck became an executive with Oreck Corporation.

Before this, Yeko had only sporadically charged extra for star cards. I have his flyers from May 15 and June 15, 1965, in which he was selling singles from the new 1965 Topps baseball set for 3 cents each, except Willie Mays (#250) and Mickey Mantle (#350) were 10 cents each. But in his 4-page price list from that year, the first page of which is below, he was still charging the same for all the cards in a given set.



All that changed once Yeko bought out Oreck. He took over Oreck's catalogue, using the same cover with his name and address substituted (see them side by side below), though he made it smaller and printed it on newsprint rather than nicer paper. More importantly, he enthusiastically adopted Oreck's practice of charging more for star players, because it turned out that people were willing to pay the higher prices, thus making him more money. Somewhat disingenuously, Yeko labeled these higher-priced cards as "scarce", even though for the most part they were just as common as the other cards. Here are the relevant pages from Yeko's 1966-67 catalogue. With his stock combined with Oreck's, he could offer more than either one could before. Note that he was selling the 1952 Topps set, including the high numbers, for $125; on another page (which I didn't scan) he was offering 1933 Goudeys for 60 cents each, and the set of 240 for $144.






Recall that it was Woody Gelman's Card Collectors' Company that had originally started charging extra for some star cards, though on an inconsistent basis. While all that we saw above was going on between Oreck and Yeko, Gelman's price lists hardly changed. In his price list no. 19, dated January 15, 1967, he still was not charging a premium for any individual Topps cards from 1951 through 1961, and the only ones after that for which he was charging extra were 1962 Maris and Mantle, 1963 Maris and Mantle, 1964 Mantle, 1965 Mantle, 1966 Mantle and Mays, and 1967 Mantle and Mays. But in his price list no. 20, dated January 15, 1968, Gelman finally buckled and began charging more for star cards across the board. He had three price levels for each set: commons, cards that cost a bit more (minor stars), and "very rare cards" (the biggest stars). The idea that only "rare" or "scarce" cards should cost more remained a stubborn idea within the hobby, but at least by the late 1960s the prices of star cards were starting to catch up with market realities.

[bostonmarathonman]

Just read this fresh off the presses--great stuff as always, keep up the good work!

[LuckyLarry]

Thanks for all your efforts David they are much appreciated!

I collected pretty heavily as a kid 1962-1967 (as did most of the other boys on our block) but never knew of these mail order options. Too bad for me because I think I might have placed some orders as we were always looking for stores around town that offered different series of cards.

I remember one of your earlier posts mentions an early collector from my home town Lancaster California. He was an adult though and somehow was in the loop.

Larry

[Jason]

Interesting read thanks David.

[Griffins]

Thanks for posting these.
Interesting about the star card prices. I ordered T206's a lot from Card Collectors Company from '72-75, and if you ordered a dozen or so he'd always include a minor Hall of Famer- Bresnahan, Clarke, etc, but as I ordered more regularly it became Bender and Brown. In early '74 I ordered about a dozen (they were .50 each I think in bulk) and got a Uzit back. Condition wasn't as important and most would probably end up a 2 or 3 today.

[insidethewrapper]

It appears that all the '52 Hi #'s were $ 1. So Mantle was considered a common in the High Series. Amazing the power of marketing !!!

[jsq]

thank you for posting these awesome articles.

all the best

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Griffins

Thanks for posting these.
Interesting about the star card prices. I ordered T206's a lot from Card Collectors Company from '72-75, and if you ordered a dozen or so he'd always include a minor Hall of Famer- Bresnahan, Clarke, etc, but as I ordered more regularly it became Bender and Brown. In early '74 I ordered about a dozen (they were .50 each I think in bulk) and got a Uzit back. Condition wasn't as important and most would probably end up a 2 or 3 today.

I bought cards from Card Collectors Co too, as well as Wholesale Card Co during the same time period. One of them included a common Old Judge in one of my orders. I spent quite a bit with them, for that time period, completing my Topps sets.

[njdunkin1]

Originally Posted by Griffins

Interesting about the star card prices. I ordered T206's a lot from Card Collectors Company.

That is awesome, it must have been so cool getting a free Uzit. Do you recall what you were paying at the time?

Aside--'51 Bowman Mantles for a dollar...gee whiz.

[moeson]

Bruce Yeko used to set up at the mid 70's NY ASCCA shows with very limited stock, but it did include a tall stack of Red Heart Mantles at a $1 per.

[mikemb]

I bought many cards from Bruce. I would make my choices and I gave my dad the cash and he would write out a check for me. Packs of cards were a nickel then so spending a dollar or two was big money to me.

I could not wait for the package to arrive. The only sad part was when you opened it up and found the small credit slip, meaning some of your choices were not available.

Mike

[spec]

Originally Posted by mikemb

I bought many cards from Bruce. I would make my choices and I gave my dad the cash and he would write out a check for me. Packs of cards were a nickel then so spending a dollar or two was big money to me.

I could not wait for the package to arrive. The only sad part was when you opened it up and found the small credit slip, meaning some of your choices were not available.

Mike

Mike,
I remember that miserable feeling well, even after 50 years.

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by moeson

Bruce Yeko used to set up at the mid 70's NY ASCCA shows with very limited stock, but it did include a tall stack of Red Heart Mantles at a $1 per.

Howie, my dad (Mike Aronstein) was a host of those those shows. I've heard lots of stories . It's great to see his name listed in the 1963 publication above, collecting as a 23yo. I'm 38 now and he's 77.

That's by far the earliest mention of his name in regards to the hobby that I've seen.

[irv]

Originally Posted by mikemb

I bought many cards from Bruce. I would make my choices and I gave my dad the cash and he would write out a check for me. Packs of cards were a nickel then so spending a dollar or two was big money to me.

I could not wait for the package to arrive. The only sad part was when you opened it up and found the small credit slip, meaning some of your choices were not available.

Mike

No doubt it was!

Comparing those prices to today, what would the $1 equate to?

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by irv

No doubt it was!

Comparing those prices to today, what would the $1 equate to?

According to the first online inflation calculator I found, $1 in 1965 is the equivalent of $7.66 in 2016. That sounds about right.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by trdcrdkid

According to the first online inflation calculator I found, $1 in 1965 is the equivalent of $7.66 in 2016. That sounds about right.

I bought a box.of Topps cards for 2.40, they cost a lot more than 18.38 today.

[irv]

Originally Posted by trdcrdkid

According to the first online inflation calculator I found, $1 in 1965 is the equivalent of $7.66 in 2016. That sounds about right.

Surprised it is not more? I originally thought at least 10X more but then thought it is likely even higher than that?

Thanks.

[Griffins]

Originally Posted by njdunkin1

That is awesome, it must have been so cool getting a free Uzit. Do you recall what you were paying at the time?

Aside--'51 Bowman Mantles for a dollar...gee whiz.

T206's were .50, so that is what I paid for the Uzit. Flipped it for $10 at the monthly Garden Grove show a few months later. T205's were .75 or $1, they jumped a bit.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by mikemb

...

I could not wait for the package to arrive. The only sad part was when you opened it up and found the small credit slip, meaning some of your choices were not available.

Mike

Same things with Larry Frisch (RIP). He would send what he had and a note saying what he didn't have, IIRC. His grading was always a surprise too.

[Paul S]

One person I don't really hear much about anymore is Gar Miller. I did a few send-a-ways with him in the Sixties. Never got an IOU and I was picking postwar HOFers, or soon-to-be HOFers. He always included a short personalized note. According to his website he is still active but hasn't done a show in decades. Anybody else here deal with him?

[njdunkin1]

Originally Posted by Griffins

T206's were .50, so that is what I paid for the Uzit.

That is awesome.

[Paul S]

Originally Posted by Griffins

T206's were .50, so that is what I paid for the Uzit. Flipped it for $10 at the monthly Garden Grove show a few months later. T205's were .75 or $1, they jumped a bit.

About the same, or a little more, for me on a T206 Duffy Red Hindu. In those days I did it for the player, not the back. Just a few years ago it got graded "none higher" - possibly still is - and went to auction.

[SteveMitchell]

David seems to come up with some of the most interesting articles. As one who was familiar with the Card Collectors Co. (probably back to 1958) and Wholesale Cards (1962 or so), David's article (with equally great links) is fascinating. (Glad I got most of my necessary work done earlier.)

The 1963 Collectors Directory caught my eye and the early listings, of course, had Michael Aronstein (10,000 cards with the earliest being 1948 Bowman). I have to think he was being modest about his collection but perhaps that was "all different" cards. Then, two names below his was Jay Barry (college freshman from Michigan). Jay is still very much active on eBay as I have "run into him" there a few times. (I think he has moved to somewhere in the west.)

Please continue these trips back into hobby history, David!

Thank you,
Steve

[Griffins]

Originally Posted by Paul S

One person I don't really hear much about anymore is Gar Miller. I did a few send-a-ways with him in the Sixties. Never got an IOU and I was picking postwar HOFers, or soon-to-be HOFers. He always included a short personalized note. According to his website he is still active but hasn't done a show in decades. Anybody else here deal with him?

I bought a card from Gar a few years ago
Thanked him for being so kind to me as a kid 30 years earlier and sending me his book on cards
He sent me back an updated copy with a nice note. Class act.

[moeson]

Originally Posted by Paul S

One person I don't really hear much about anymore is Gar Miller. I did a few send-a-ways with him in the Sixties. Never got an IOU and I was picking postwar HOFers, or soon-to-be HOFers. He always included a short personalized note. According to his website he is still active but hasn't done a show in decades. Anybody else here deal with him?

Gar was the first dealer that I ever bought cards from back in 1971. Out of nostalgia, I recently checked out his website and bought a few cards from him. Same great service after all these years!

[robw1959]

I too remember the Card Collectors Catalogue. I recall making a large order of about 100 HOFer cards from the Topps 1960s sets in the mid-seventies, '75 or '76, but only received about four total cards of Jim Palmer and Rod Carew from the late '60s, along with most of my money back. The explanation for the shortage was that a fire had occurred.

[moeson]

Originally Posted by robw1959

I too remember the Card Collectors Catalogue. I recall making a large order of about 100 HOFer cards from the Topps 1960s sets in the mid-seventies, '75 or '76, but only received about four total cards of Jim Palmer and Rod Carew from the late '60s, along with most of my money back. The explanation for the shortage was that a fire had occurred.

They had a disastrous fire that destroyed a large part of their inventory, especially their hoard of test set cards. I remember having to specify that I didn't want any fire/water damaged cards. You could smell the smoke on a lot of their cards after that fire.

[Jerry G]

This is the July 1, 1966 price list that starts out with the announcement that Wholesale Cards has bought out Marshall Oreck. Bruce Yecko is justifiably very proud that the new catalog (see David's post above for scan) will be similar to the one that Marshall "has published for the last three years, but with 50 more sets" and promised that the catalog will be "the most complete book of information on recent issues ever published." I emphatically agree.

With each order you would receive a new price list. Often, Bruce would place comments or state which cards were currently in stock along the boarder of the price list. On this one, he responded to my question of availability of a regional issue, 1965 Big Red Biographies and offered to pay $0.15 each for mine. I wasn't selling then, but 51 years later, I did and received substantially more from a advanced net54 football collector.

Directly below the red ink message, you might notice a cut out corner of the price list. This is where Bruce wrote out my credit slip, which was obviously redeemed. I'm sure it was for less than a dollar as my total orders were usually between $2 and $4. I wasn't smart enough to ask my dad to write a check, but I was smart enough to tape down all the nickles, dimes and quarters.

[Jay Wolt]

David great stuff!
Thanks for posting

[Jerry G]

Originally Posted by Leon

Same things with Larry Frisch (RIP). He would send what he had and a note saying what he didn't have, IIRC. His grading was always a surprise too.

If you were a college student in the 70's... you might understand how this credit slip was overlooked.

[akleinb611]

Not to hijack this very interesting thread, but I wrote up a mini-memoir for SCD back in 2011, about my collecting experiences with Mssrs. Yeko, Gelman and Fritsch. It doesn't contain as many surprising facts, but is rather a more subjective account of how I discovered each of these dealers. I've never allowed a lack of knowledge to stop me.

This appeared in the January 4, 2011 issue of SCD - \

http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.co...gelman_frisch/

Hope you guys enjoy it.

And as for this thread, it proves that you can always learn something new. I had no idea that Marshall Oreck was a member of THAT Oreck family. I immediately told my wife that whenever she's vacuuming the living room, she's actually paying tribute to the early days of the hobby.

She just gave me that look many of us have received from our spouse, the look that says, "Dear God, this is the man I chose to be the father of my children."

Alan Kleinberger

[trdcrdkid]

Thanks to everybody for the nice comments, especially the recollections of buying from Yeko, Gelman, and Oreck, and the additional price lists and stuff from back then. I have quite a bit more, but I could only include so much because you're limited to 18 images per post, and I was kind of trying to tell a story here. I'll certainly post more as I have time.

By the way, not only is Bruce Yeko still around and very active in his 70s, but so are Marshall Oreck, who is 88 and lives in New Orleans, and Marshall's brother David Oreck of vacuum cleaner fame, who is 93.

[Baseball Rarities]

Awesome stuff. Thanks so much David.

[Rich Klein]

Originally Posted by robw1959

I too remember the Card Collectors Catalogue. I recall making a large order of about 100 HOFer cards from the Topps 1960s sets in the mid-seventies, '75 or '76, but only received about four total cards of Jim Palmer and Rod Carew from the late '60s, along with most of my money back. The explanation for the shortage was that a fire had occurred.

The fire did occur and that is one reason why in the 1970's the 1970 Johnny Bench card was so difficult. Many of those cards disappeared in that fire.

Rich

[jsq]

Originally Posted by Paul S

One person I don't really hear much about anymore is Gar Miller. I did a few send-a-ways with him in the Sixties. Never got an IOU and I was picking postwar HOFers, or soon-to-be HOFers. He always included a short personalized note. According to his website he is still active but hasn't done a show in decades. Anybody else here deal with him?

yes i remember Gar, i bought his "baseball card collecting guidebook" he sold in the 1970's. that book helped move the hobby forward as he contacted many major city library systems and they bought bulk quantitiy for distribution to all their branches in the 1970's. before becketts guide their was a lack of info for the public, this froze many collections in place as people did not know what to do with their collection. Jim's price guide followed Gar's rudimentary guide and really broke the ice with the mass public.

Gar is a nice guy and a true hobby pioneer, he was also a very good baseball player thru college.

Gar was getting a volume of cards as early as the 50's as i recall, he purchased from friends and acquaintances when he was at college playing ball etc for 1950's that was pretty forward thinking.

talked to Gar about 3 years ago and he is a font of knowledge on the hobby history. Gar was an early pioneer in hotel buying trips and hobby advertising to the general public.

Gar and Mike Aronstein are two VERY underapreciated hobby pioneers. they did a lot of work educating the public and making the hobby.

hello Gar if you are reading this.

[Leon]

Got my first R319 Ruth #144 from Gar, from a Xerox scan he sent me.....many years ago. Great thread.

Originally Posted by jsq

yes i remember Gar, i bought his "baseball card collecting guidebook" he sold in the 1970's. that book helped move the hobby forward as he contacted many major city library systems and they bought bulk quantitiy for distribution to all their branches in the 1970's. before becketts guide their was a lack of info for the public, this froze many collections in place as people did not know what to do with their collection. Jim's price guide followed Gar's rudimentary guide and really broke the ice with the mass public.

Gar is a nice guy and a true hobby pioneer, he was also a very good baseball player thru college.

Gar was getting a volume of cards as early as the 50's as i recall, he purchased from friends and acquaintances when he was at college playing ball etc for 1950's that was pretty forward thinking.

talked to Gar about 3 years ago and he is a font of knowledge on the hobby history. Gar was an early pioneer in hotel buying trips and hobby advertising to the general public.

Gar and Mike Aronstein are two VERY underapreciated hobby pioneers. they did a lot of work educating the public and making the hobby.

hello Gar if you are reading this.

[jchcollins]

What an incredible treasure threads like this are. I'm very much interested in the "early" hobby that a lot of this represents. It again reminds me that with baseball cards like many other things - I was born too late. I started buying Topps packs as a 9 year-old in 1986. It was a few years later before I discovered "old" (the word vintage was not yet en vogue...) cards and the ability to buy them at shops, and later - through the mail. My first real treasure was a 1966 Topps Koufax that my Mom ponied-up about $20 for. :-)

[Wite3]

When I was 17 and 18 in the late 80s and early 90s, I started to send Gar a check and my wantlist and he would just fill what he thought was fair. I did this probably 10-15 times over a 3 or 4 year period...loved that he did that and I was always surprised and happy with what I got...I remember completing my '53 Bowman B/W set with him among other things. He was a fountain of knowledge and pointed me in several directions for cards I was seeking that he did not have. Great hobby guy.

Joshua

[Hot Springs Bathers]

I think I have mentioned this before but during the 1980's I would send Gar a check, usually in the $20-35.00 range and he would fill my T206 and T205 want lists.

His efforts along with some big purchases from George Lyons helped me on both of those sets. Gar then helped me work my way through some early Bowman material. I am glad he is still involved. A very nice man!

Wish I still had all of those cards!!!!!