New here: collecting postcards/ephemera (all sports) & boxing cards; ID'ing RPPCs

[ericm79]

Hey all, I'm new and posted this last night in the postcard thread, but Leon kindly suggested I start a new thread here:

Hi, I'm new here — I found Net54 while digging into the 1970s evolution of the hobby, as I was doing some research (characteristic over-reporting) to inform this piece I did for the Atlantic about the rise of breaking and the unexpected turns the contemporary card world has taken:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...-weird/598345/

All of that deep-dive history necessarily had to get cut for space — I had 2,000 words to work with, and a general-interest audience — but I relished getting lost in the scans of old issues of The Trader Speaks and the Card Collectors' Co. newsletter. What a great resource to find that stuff scanned here!

I was part of the "junk wax" demographic bubble, and collected most intensively as a middle schooler (1990-93), drifted away in the mid-90s, and just came back to modern/contemporary sports cards recently. But I've always had the collecting bug/gene, and always been interested in history; I've been an antique postcard collector for 20 years, and have a few thousand cards, including several hundred RPPCs, many of them vernacular images of baseball and other sports from the early 1900s. ... So I'm really excited to find this thread in particular, and wonder if any of you might bring more insight or expertise to bear on cards I haven't been able to ID.

Here's one I picked up recently, for just a few dollars. The building in the background (and non-stadium setting for an in-uniform pic) makes me think these aren't major leaguers, but there's a crispness and polish to the players that made this card stand out to me from the usual bedraggled look of amateur/town/factory teams on RPPCs. Somebody wrote "Tom and ----" above the heads of the two players, though it's pretty faint now. The second name looks like it ends "-try." It's possible it says "Autry," though it looks like there's a dot for an "i" above the name — making it possible also that someone was trying to write "Christy" but scrambled the letters and put an "r" between the "t" and the "y." Anyone, curious if anyone can make anything of it. Thanks in advance!

[ericm79]

I'm not much of an image retoucher, but here's an attempt at punching up the contrast on the area with the writing:

[EvilKing00]

Welcome to the forum eric, u have come to the right place

[ericm79]

And to expand on the above, I collect pre-"linen" (ie, pre-1930s) postcards from all sports, which mainly means ballpark and stadium views among lithograph and collotype postcards printed on a press and the anything-goes assortment associated with real photo postcards, from slick ballpark and team views to wonderfully amateurish vernacular pictures taken at the local park or diamond. I also have a small but growing collection of cards, menus, and ephemera from vanished celebrity-athlete restaurants, like Lew Tendler's, James Jeffries's, and Jack Dempsey's establishments.

Among tobacco/gum/candy/periodical cards, I mainly collect Jewish boxers and New England boxers from the 1900s to 1930s, from any and all sets and issues. As a broader/less tribal/more ecumenical offshoot, I'm slowly working to compile the full sets of the T218 Champions and the 1908-09 Ogden's Pugilists & Wrestlers and 1915 Ogden's Boxers sets — drawn partly to the full-color renderings in an age of black-and-white views.

As an RPPC (real photo postcards) collector, I've been enjoying following and participating in a Facebook group devoted to unidentified images and crowd-sourced sleuthing (https://www.facebook.com/groups/rppcmystery/) on user-submitted cards. People mainly post portraits, main-street views, and animal scenes there, but I tend to post baseball, football, and basketball, like this one — which remains unsolved, but which I imagine came from either a prep school or small college in New England or maybe Ohio, NY, or PA.

I'll try to upload some other unsolved baseball RPPCs in short order. It would be awesome to draw on the considerable insight here to try to ID some of these. If there's broader interest in postcards, I can also share some of my favorite non-mystery baseball or sports postcards. Thanks for taking a look!

[ericm79]

Originally Posted by EvilKing00

Welcome to the forum eric, u have come to the right place

Thanks, Steve!

[h2oya311]

agreed! Welcome, and good luck. I can't help you much (ahem, at all) on the ones you've posted so far, but you might find some folks who love to research the heck out of something until they're blue in the face on this forum. I'm not one of those people though. Keep at it!

[MikeGarcia]

..if this was found near the border or actually in Canada the second name may be "Aubry" ? - that's how my eye perceived it in that all-important first glance. Does the word "Poste" appear on the back ? The French-Canadian/New England angle would account for the architecture and warm clothing and "Tom" looks French-ish....just a thought. I'm wrong a lot though. Good hunting and welcome aboard.
..

[Jobu]

Welcome Eric!

Tom and Aubry looks right to me. I just searched Baseball Reference for Aubry and just got middle names. This feels like some town ball guys to me.

[ericm79]

Derek, Mike, and Bryan —*thanks for these great replies, and for giving that card a close look. Sorry for the delay here on my end. Here are a few more cool ones I'd love to know more about. I assume the BHSAA here is a "high school athletic association" team, and the age looks right, but I'd love to know where. It's a divided-back card with an AZO "arrows up" stamp box, meaning it's from 1907-1918.

[ericm79]

This one's really neat. Some of the jerseys say WHITELEY, and there's only one of those in the US — a speck on the map in the SW corner of Pennsylvania, so I'd guess that's where this one comes from. Love the all-ages crowd, the mix of farm-wear and Sunday-best clothing, and the three guys on horseback. The AZO four-diamond box narrows this one down to 1907-1909.

[ericm79]

That note on the back appears to indicate that there are two people named "P. Tennant" or "P. Tenant" in the picture, one at the bottom and one on horseback. Looks like there were a lot of Tennants/Tenants in the 1910 and 1920 Census for the wider county, if not Whiteley itself, including a farmer named Presley Tenant (b. ~1861) and a gas station employee/farmer named Perry Tenant (b. ~1880)

[ericm79]

OK, here's one that might appeal to the group. I think this might be the 1907 Norwich team from the New York Central League. Anyone have any insight on what that means? Was this a professional team, and would it have equated to a certain tier/class (ie, Class D) of minor league baseball, or more like an independent league?

The note on the back is great and says, "The bunch that can whip Carbondale. All right!!" The postmark was hard to decipher, but I eventually figured out that it was sent from Norwich, NY, sometime in August 1907, to a Mr. J. Merva in Scranton, PA.

All the players appear to be wearing "N" jerseys, save for the guy at the bottom left, who looks like he has a big, if faint, V on his chest. The guy with the suit and the scorebook suggests at least a modicum of organization or professionalism, and the wooden stands have — if not an outright press box — some kind of area with dining chairs and not just bleachers. The guy second from left has an x penned on him on the image; the back doesn't ID him, but I would guess maybe it's the sender?

Any thoughts on this one?

[RCMcKenzie]

Is it the Norwich Reds of the Connecticut State League Class B? Here are a couple of links, bunch...

http://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseba...nr13417/y-1907

www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Norwich_Reds