Who was your first pre-war HOFer?
 

I honestly can't remember for sure, but I think the first pre-war Hall of Famer I acquired was a T206 Elmer Flick. Nothing overly exceptional about either the player or the card, but I can't seem to part with it, even though I now own fewer than a dozen T206. I loved the name--it rolls off the tongue--and the card has just the perfect amount of wear to ooze genuineness and dead ball era. As I pay homage to 'ol Elmer, who was the first HOFer in your collection?

http://photos.imageevent.com/imoverh.../t206flick.jpg

T206 John McGraw Portrait, No Cap

T206 Frank "Home Run" Baker

T205 Cobb SGC 50....which became the first prewar card I sold.....and then used that cash to go to my first National in 2005.

'39 PB Gehringer bought from Kevin Savage

t206 matty white cap beater...still have it...paid $2 for it.

T206 Nap Lajoie, early 1970's at a Flea Market for $1(my dad paid). I was a kid less than 10 or so.

Still have it also.

This was my third or fourth T206, one of my favorites.

http://i.imgur.com/gvd1v5O.jpg

Mine was a T205 Matty for $125. He was missing a tiny piece of paper on the bridge of his nose, which bugged me to no end.

1933 goudey Travis Jackson August 20, 2009

Mine was the WaJo portrait below, and it's still one of my favorites.

http://photos.imageevent.com/ltsgall...ze/johnson.jpg

mine was the 1934 Goudey Lou Gehrig portrait. Back in the early 90's after watching Pride of the Yankees.

I was hooked !

Bought a stack of T cards (all kinds) from Charlie Conlon in the 70's for 100 bucks......loaded with HOFs, including t206 Cobb red and green portraits.
Sure was a lot more fun when cards weren't worth a lot of money. One hundred dollars was about 2 weeks full time work for me as stock boy at S. S. Kresge Co. My dad thought I had lost my mind.

Purchased in May, 2004. First time I'd ever paid more than $10 for a card. Damn, that seems like a long time ago, ha! Still have Mr. Tinker.

WG5 Runner Sliding Umpire Behind
 

Three years ago I was just getting back into cards (60s, 70s, and 80s mostly), scouring ebay auctions as they wound down near close. I don't remember exactly how it played out, but I saw a National Game card, Runner Sliding Umpire Behind referencing Ty Cobb as the runner. At the same time I saw an identical card without referencing Cobb. The "Cobb" card closed at $75, so I made a move and was able to win the no "Cobb' in title at half the price. That is when i realized that I could find 100 year old HOFers in my budget if I worked at it. I add only a few a year, but the game of it is more than half the fun.

Joe Tinker bat on shoulder exmt purchased from Bill Mastro in 1981.

Bought this one raw in the 1990s and sent it in for grading to the old SGC...still mine:

Buck Jordan
 

T206 Tim Jordan portrait I got as a kid (circa 1989) for about $4. I had no idea who he was till I got home, but got really fired up when I saw he'd been a league leading HR hitter. I put it in my hands, smelled it and then hung it on my wall... and I reveled at the thought that the guy who'd originally pulled it from a cigarette pack was probably long since gone.

1933 Goudey Babe Ruth #144 back in the mid to late 90's......paid $350 for it raw. If I would have had it graded, it probably would have been a 4.

33 Goudey Gehrig #92 PSA 8. Back in 2000 I traded a bunch of 50's PSA 8's of Mays, Aaron, Williams, Clemente and Koufax for the PSA 8 Gehrig. I soon realized I could not afford to collect pre-war 8's so I sold it and bought a bunch of mid-grade pre-war HOF'ers.

I think mine was a 33 Goudey Bill Terry (portrait), probably purchased from Paul E. Marchant.

Me too!

<a href="http://s210.photobucket.com/user/Tyjaycox/media/cards/T206JohnMcGrawPortraitNoCapPSA4.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb189/Tyjaycox/cards/T206JohnMcGrawPortraitNoCapPSA4.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo T206JohnMcGrawPortraitNoCapPSA4.jpg"/></a>

first
 

mine was a T206 matty dark cap in '84---around 15 bucks.
all the best,
barry

Bought a group of about 10 1933 Goudeys that had been pasted in a scrapbook around 1974. They all cleaned up pretty well. Maybe 5% paper loss. Included Ruth, Speaker, Bottomley, Cuyler, Lazzeri, and Pepper Martin. Paid $10 for the Ruth. Still have them all and no desire to upgrade. Luv em despite their flaws!

http://i1278.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4bbaea8a.jpg

T206 Cy Young portrait ... I won it on Easter Sunday a few years ago.

Awesome :)

1933 Goudey Rabbit Maranville. I assumed pre-war cards were going to be well out of my price range but had recently read an article citing Maranville as the least deserving Hall of Famer, so I thought I'd see if I could at least afford one of his cards. Overpaid with a BIN on Ebay.

Addie Joss
 

Got a t-206 Joss in the late 70's. Later had it graded and it got a PSA 6. Still is a cornerstone of my Cleveland collection.

Bought a 1933 Goudey Vernon "Lefty" Gomez for fifty cents in a junk box at the local card shop circa 1988. Sold it a few years later for $15. Should've held on to it for posterity.

A E120 of Stan Coveleski

T202 Just Before the Battle: Meyers/ Mathewson. Bought at my first National, 1992 Atlanta.

T206 Miller Huggins Hands at Mouth Cycle PSA

T206 Lajoie
 

A T206 Nap Lajoie, Throwing, Pied 150

I purchased it at a local auction in the D.C. area in the early 90's. I had it graded in 2007, a PSA 5. I have considered selling it several times since I have another Pied 150 PSA 3 that closer fits my collecting style (my T206 HOF collection is almost exclusively PSA/SGC 2-3), but that "first card" pull is strong.
Dave

I think my first was
 

'41 Play Ball Arky Vaughan, purchased as a kid in the early '80s. Big tape stain across the upper front, but otherwise fairly nice. Still have it.

Cobb Bat Off
 

Got it mid/late sixties. $5. When most others were thinking Thai, I thought Ty. Still got it. Here. Thai came later...bat off version.;)

I bought a 33 Goudey Goslin port and Hornsby #119 around 1979 from an ad in a baseball publication. I think the Goslin was $40 and the Hornsby $70. I probably paid way too much on account of the cost of the ad. Here is the Goslin. It is still in one of my early vintage binders shown here front/back. I traded the Hornsby a long time ago. Cheers.

Attachment 100093

Attachment 100094

Attachment 100095

Jim O'Rourke

Got this 30 years ago

Thirty years ago, these were much more affordable. I still have the card & credit it for drawing me back into the hobby in 2006, after a nearly 20 year hiatus.

Tim Jordan is in HOF now? ;)

Cheers,
Blair

Very nice! Looks like my first HOF card :cool:

The man who won the greatest game ever played. Mordecai Brown - T206.

First pre-war HOF
 

1933 World Wide Gum Ruth I purchased in 1992. Still my favourite card.

Josh

T206 Ty Cobb Red Portrait. I bought it in a The Traders Speaks magazine auction in the early 70's from Fred Copp in Detroit, Michigan for $5.00 in near mint condition.

T206 Jake Beckley. Polar bear back, with a load of really bad creases. First prewar Hof, and first prewar card. And only 20 cents:D

I still have it.

Steve B

Mordecai Brown played in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS?:eek:

Jake, you must be a Yankee fan to think that that game was better than Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. :D

And a young fan as well to think that it's better than the 1978 AL playoff (ie. the Bucky Dent game).

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/calvindog/2909269085/" title="Lajoie Throwing by calvindog65, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3143/2909269085_e637840347_o.jpg" width="450" height="758" alt="Lajoie Throwing"></a>

T206 Cobb bat off. I saw it in an auction on eBay and I put a bunch of money down -expecting to be outbid eventually. 5 days later, the bidding still hadn't caught up and I instantly became a pre war card collector!

1st pre-war HOFer
 

Not quite sure,,,they were within a few days of each other, but either a T205 McGraw (Polar Bear back) or an E135 - type blank back Sam Crawford

Yankee Fan? Check!

I wasn't alive during the Playoff, I'm sure there was much excitement with rivals playing in a Win or Go Home Tiebreak. Always gotta go with the Extra Inning Walk-Off though.:)

T201 Ed Walsh July 30, 1995 Cooperstown, N.Y.
Mike Schmidt and Richie Ashburn Induction Weekend.
How can you forget that!!
Just may have been the most enjoyable few days in my life!!
We had a ball!!!

Woah! My bad. I missed the "HoF" in the thread title! :rolleyes: Pretty sure my first pre-war HOFer was one of the following- '33 Goudey Joe Cronin or Paul "big poison" Waner, or a T206 Rube Waddell pitching. I bought all the same day at the same SF show a few years later while in HS.

I still have them all, though the mediocre Mr. jordan has long since come down from my wall.

I don't own it anymore but it was a 33 Goudey Gehrig #92... It was a thrill...my first big time pre war HOF card!

Ricky Y

Mine was a T206 Ty Cobb, red portrait

1935 Diamond Star Lefty Grove
 

Here was my first pre-war card. I will never trade or sell this. I have had it since 1986 or 1987.

My first
 

My first:

1909-11 T206 Nap Lajoie (w/ Bat) Polar Bear back

Bought it raw in 2002 and got it graded last year - came back as SGC 50!
Sold it shortly thereafter for a nice 132% profit (not a horrible 10 year return though).

At the time, I wanted a card of each player in the 3,000 hit club...somehow that collection morphed into a focus on HoF rookies...here I am today...not a single T206 in my collection!!!

I learn something almost everyday on Net54. And to think that I have long believed that Walter Johnson won the 7th game of the 1924 World Series! :D

Speaking of WaJo, my first pre-War card was a T207 WaJo that I will always keep - got it in a trade with Bill Huggins back in the mid-1980s, before he got into doing auctions - I went to his card store in nearby Maryland and traded Bill some pristine 1960 Topps commons, which, thankfully, Mom didn't toss after I left home. This led me to acquiring as many WaJo cards as I could find and afford ever since.
Val

1979..I was 16...T205 Frank Chance.