Buck Barker's 1949 card collecting columns in Sports Exchange Trading Post

[trdcrdkid]

Card Collectors' Bulletin, launched in 1937 by Jefferson Burdick, was the first hobby publication dedicated to card collecting, and as such it's rightly acknowledged as pioneering, an indispensable source of information about the early days of the organized hobby. But Burdick collected and was interested in all kinds of cards, not just baseball cards, and the content of CCB reflects that. While there was an occasional article about baseball or other sports cards by someone like Lionel Carter or Walt Corson, the majority of the articles were about other kinds of cards, and similarly, baseball cards made up a minority of the auction listings.

Sports Exchange Trading Post, launched in January 1945 by Jack Seifert, was the most successful of numerous publications launched in the 1940s that were devoted specifically to sports collecting -- cards, programs, guides, autographs, memorabilia, etc. It ran monthly (more or less) for five years, until January 1950, and I have the last three of these years complete (January 1947-January 1950).

SETP was heavily oriented towards baseball, and there were sometimes non-collecting baseball articles (pennant race previews, etc.), but there was not much about baseball cards, at least in the early years. There had been no major baseball card sets issued since 1941 because of World War II, and since most collectors were interested in recent stuff (then as now), there was much more of an emphasis on autographs, programs, and stuff like that. Seifert did issue several series of pictures of baseball players, a set of large (7" x 10") pictures of current players now known as W603 and a set of smaller cards now known as W602, and these were heavily advertised in each issue. But there were no new gum cards issued until Bowman and Leaf in 1948, and I can find no mention of them in SETP until late that year. Wirt Gammon, a sportswriter by trade who wrote for many hobby publications well into the 1980s, had a semi-regular column devoted to baseball collecting (some of which I may scan later), but he only occasionally mentioned cards, and did not mention 1948 Bowman baseball cards until October 1948, when he referred to "Swell Bubble Gum's set [The Babe Ruth Story] and Blony Bubble Gum's [the brand name on the back of the Bowman cards]" as "new sets".

In 1949, its last full year of existence, Sports Exchange Trading Post had a semi-regular column on baseball cards written by Charles Barker, otherwise known as legendary collector Buck Barker. I've never seen reference to these columns before, so I've scanned them all below.

Barker's writing had first appeared in the January 1948 SETP in the "Hints on Record-Keeping" column (first scan below), in which he described how he had spent 20 years obsessively collecting baseball pictures from newspapers and magazines, until it got to be too much and he stopped to focus on cards.

Barker's first baseball card column was in the February 1949 SETP (second and third scans below). It was about exhibit cards, and included checklists of 1945-1948 exhibit baseball. The second checklist had to be continued on another page, and I've included that whole two-page spread because it also includes the classified ads, which are interesting in their own right.

Barker had no column in the March 1949 issue, but he had one in the April 1949 issue (scans 4 and 5 below), in which SETP went to a new larger format with no staples. Now writing under the title "Hobby Hints", he gave his 13 rules for trading and collecting, which are pretty interesting, and include a lot of personal stuff. I like #8, which says that "Many mothers are the natural enemies of collections, who will toss them in the fire if you don't watch them."

Barker also had columns in the next two issues: in May 1949 it was "Cards and Other Stuff" (scan 6), a brief history of baseball cards, and in June 1949 (scans 7 and 8) it was a two-page spread on gum cards. In the latter column he mentions that he has only met two of his readers in person, Wirt Gammon and John Beelman, but that "By the time this appears in print, I'll probably have met Lionel Carter of Evanston, Illinois", and that he had corresponded with many others, including Jake Wise (whose obituary by Carter I posted last week: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=221758). He also lists the sets using his own numbering system rather than the ACC numbers; I'm not sure whether he didn't know about the ACC yet (which seems unlikely, but possible), or if he just throught those numbers would be confusing for his readers. Note that he includes gum cards of other sports besides baseball.

Barker had no column in the July 1949 issue, but he was back in the August-September 1949 issue with an article on team-issued cards sold at the ballpark (scan 9). Then in October 1949 he had a short article giving the addresses of baseball teams that sold pictures through the mail (scan 10). That was the last column by Barker before the last issue of SETP in January 1950; however, the November 1949 issue had an article by Jack Saunders about Remar Bakery baseball cards, and I've included that as the last scan.

I find these columns really interesting as a window into baseball card collecting almost 70 years ago, when the organized hobby was still in its infancy and Topps had not yet issued any baseball cards. Numerous people have looked at copies of Card Collectors' Bulletin from this period, and Leon and others have scanned and posted some issues, but I've never seen any reference to these Sports Exchange Trading Post articles by Barker. I hope some of you find them as interesting as I do.

[Leon]

Very good Buck Barker reading. I like one of his rules that says, to paraphrase, "moms can be a collections worst enemy" .

[CharleyBrown]

Very interesting read! Gives some good info on the release date of each of the Exhibit cards. By any chance have you found any columns of his that talk about Bond Bread cards (specifically the 13 card Jackie Robinson set)? I see he mentions Remar Bread and Tip Top Bread in this entry.

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by CharleyBrown

Very interesting read! Gives some good info on the release date of each of the Exhibit cards. By any chance have you found any columns of his that talk about Bond Bread cards (specifically the 13 card Jackie Robinson set)? I see he mentions Remar Bread and Tip Top Bread in this entry.

These are all the columns by Barker that appeared in Sports Exchange Trading Post (SETP), at least from January 1947 on. Sorry if the beginning part of this post was too long-winded to read, but each of these articles is from a different issue of SETP between February 1949 and October 1949. (The Remar article was in the November 1949 issue, and was written by somebody else.) Wirt Gammon wrote a semi-regular column on baseball collecting throughout the three-year period I have (January 1947-January 1950), but there's not much in there about cards, and I don't remember seeing anything about Bond Bread cards. I was thinking about posting those Gammon columns, and if I do, I'll try to look through the rest of the issues for any mention of cards. But like I said in the original post, most of SETP was focused on things like autographs, programs, publications, and scrapbooking/newspaper clippings.