1974 Article about the Hobby.........

[teetwoohsix]

I came across a magazine yesterday called "Acquire-The Magazine of Contemporary Collectibles",Spring Issue,May 1974.It has a 2 page article about the hobby that I found very interesting,and thought many of you would also.The article was written by Ralph Novak.It's called "Season Opener On Baseball Cards":

Baseball cards used to be to serious collectors what McDonald's hamburgers are to serious gourmets:something to sink your teeth into only if you are really desperate.

But the last 15 years have seen baseball card collecting go legitimate.The bigger collectors are now dealing in thousands of cards (and dollars),collector conventions are springing up all over the country,new journals are getting published almost every month and there is even a resident baseball card collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

True,the joys of the youthful collector have been diluted.Time was a baseball-crazed youngster would chance upon a stray penny and dash off to his local grocery store to buy one lone card,all glistening and full of promise in its bright-colored,wax paper wrap.He could rip off the paper,and look to see if he had come up with a Bob Feller or a Ted Williams or a Willie Mays.He usually ended up with someone more obscure,like Harry Gumpert,or Doyle Lade,but the thrill was in the chase.

Now there are baseball card brokers who take orders for all the 700 plus cards in a year's series even before the baseball season begins.Kids can get the whole set,guaranteed complete,for about two cents a card,taking all the uncertainty and legwork-and a lot of the fun-out of the process.Meanwhile,heavy collectors can add another year to their collections in what is the most eternally expanding collectible this side of postage stamps.

While the economics of the situation dictate that most of the major collectors are adults,that doesn't mean they don't like what they're doing.Mike Aronstein,for instance,is a 34-year-old steel salesman from Yorktown Heights,N.Y.,who was an enthusiastic organizer of the two American Sports Card Collectors Assn. shows last year in New York City.(He conceded that he and three friends were the Association's only members but he pointed out that "thousands" of people had attended the New York shows and that there were others in Chicago,Detroit,and Cincinnati,among other places).

"I've spent a lot of weekends looking for cards at flea markets and I've been to a lot of really schlocky antique dealers," Aronstein says."But there's something about the one time in a hundred when you find something worthwhile that makes you keep going back for more.I can remember when I found a real bargain on an old Nap Lajoie,my heart was pounding pretty hard until I had it in my pocket."

Aronstein has a personal collection he values at $10,000.00 and a small brokerage business called the "Card Memorabilia Associates" but he is still relatively a minor leaguer.

Bruce Yeko of Georgetown,Conn.,has what seems generally conceded to be the largest accumulation (which includes duplicates and is therefore to be distinguished from a collection),with a total of something more than 10 million cards,most of them baseball cards."He has one whole room in his house filled with cards"Aronstein says enviously."And there are times when he can't even walk in his house because it's filled with cards.Honest to God,you can't even open the front door all the way."

If Yeko has the quantity championship,however,the quality title goes to the 500,000-card collection of Frank Nagy,a 51-year-old mechanic from Grosse Ile,Mich.,who once took $4,000.00-his life savings-and bought a collection without telling his wife.Nagy is legendary among collectors for buying cases of breakfast cereal and candy to get the cards that are sometimes offered as premiums."I have $40.00 worth of Milk Duds in the basement right now,if anybody is interested in eating any," he once told a Wall Street Journal reporter."We keep them in shoe boxes."

Those fringe lines and local card offerings-such as the card sets of the Washington Senators distributed by Briggs Hot Dogs in Washington in the early 1950's-are often the most valuable.

One reason for that is the mass availability of Topps baseball cards,the only nationally distributed line of the traditional "bubble gum cards,"since Topps turns out its 250,000,000 cards a year under a virtual monopoly contract with the major league players,as it has for 20 years.Though the company does not deal with large collectors or dealers itself,the effect of its takeover was to end the rampant competition that had existed among gum,tobacco and cigarette sellers to win the national baseball card market.That marked a turning point.No longer would people buy the product and get the cards as a bonus;now they would buy the cards and get the product-bubble gum in this case-as a bonus.

The first baseball cards anyone remembers were issued in 1886 by Old Judge cigarettes,and the tobacco interests dominated the hobby for a long time.In fact,it is a 1910 Sweet Caporal cigarette card of Pittsburgh Pirate shortstop Honus Wagner that is today the Holy Grail of baseball card collectors.Since Wagner opposed smoking,he became annoyed when he learned his likeness was gracing the back of cigarette packages and threatened to sue the company unless they withdrew the issue,so today only about a dozen of the cards are believed to exist.And the last time anyone sold one of them,in 1972,it brought a record $1,500.00,the highest ever paid for a baseball card,according to Paul Gallagher,one of Aronstein's partners in the Card Collectors Association.

Gum companies-Fleer,Leaf,and Bowman,primarily-took over the bulk of the baseball card business in the '30s and '40s,but it wasn't until Topps' coup in the '50s that the main line of cards took on a mass-produced,big business air and perhaps indirectly contributed to the increased interest in the older,more idiosyncratic cards.

It was in 1963,not too longer after that,that the Metropolitan inherited its baseball cards,the focal point of a collection of 100,000 miscellaneous trading cards willed to it by Jefferson Burdick,a Syracuse ad salesman.Today it is known as "The Burdick Collection" and usually at least a couple of people every week make the appointment that is necessary to see the cards,which are cached in a museum vault,much as a prudent 10-year-old might have safeguarded his Stan Musial or Yogi Berra in 1953.

Nobody knows how many buying-and-selling baseball card collectors there are today but the latest edition of "Who's Who in Card Collecting"($5.00 from I.Lerner,Box 5201,Phila.,Pa.,19126)lists more than 500 names and Aronstein estimates that there are "at least a few thousand" around the country.As for the future,the program at one of the New York conventions last year said "Hobby publications are springing up all the time,new cards are being discovered regularly,prices are rising at a dizzying pace.Not even the most optimistic of us would have predicted these changes a short while ago.What the future holds none of us can forecast.Perhaps sports collecting will grow to rival the stamp and coin hobbies or it may once again be left in the hands of a few of us fanatics."

Aronstein was expounding on just what "fanatics" meant for a reporter at that convention when he suddenly stood up in the middle of a question.He was staring over the reporter's shoulder,eyes glazing,as an exhibitor at a nearby table was unpacking his cards and putting them on display.
"Excuse me" Aronstein said absent-mindedly as he walked away."I just saw a Ducky Medwick I have to have."

End

[vintagetoppsguy]

Neat article.

May I suggest editing your post to include spacing between the paragraphs? That was hard on the eyes.

Thanks for sharing!

[uniship]

awesome stuff - thx for sharing.

[Jantz]

Nice article Clayton.

Thanks for posting it.

Jantz

[AndyG09]

Thanks, Clayton. That was a fun read. My buddy knew Frank Nagy, and one story he shared was about Frank buying every box of jello in the grocery store for the cards. A woman had a box in line in front of him and he offered her like 10 times the price of the jello to acquire the one she was buying. She didn't want to give it up because she thought she had something special, but had no clue what it was.

Best,

Andy

[oldjudge]

Thanks Clayton!

[E93]

Great read. Thanks.
JimB

[teetwoohsix]

Thanks for the responses guys.As I am always trying to learn as much as possible about all issues of pre war cards,I also like to learn about the history of the hobby as well.

When this article was written,1974,I was 3 years old!!And it was also interesting how the article was written in a collectibles magazine that mostly focuses on other types of collecting,such as paintings,engravings,sculptures,coins,etc.--had it been written in a baseball related mag,I wouldn't have been as inclined to post it.

Thanks for reading it.

Respectfully,Clayton

[FUBAR]

$1500 for a Wagner.... I'll take two please!

[Leon]

Clayton, great post. I love researching the history of the hobby almost as much as the cards themselves.....I will try to post a few things soon....

[chris]

"One reason for that is the mass availability of Topps baseball cards,the only nationally distributed line of the traditional "bubble gum cards,"since Topps turns out its 250,000,000 cards a year under a virtual monopoly contract with the major league players,as it has for 20 years."

Do you guys think this is accurate?? That would mean there are roughly 41,666 of each card in each year. That seems very high and likely many more LARGE hoards will someday be found.

Chris