Collecting Exhibits/Supplements/larger pre-war photos on a budget
 

As I've gotten into pre-war collecting the last few years, my focus has been mostly on more "traditional" cards like T206, T205 and 1941 Play Ball.

As I've learned more about pre-war offerings, I've become especially interested in actual photographs of players. But, my experience is that some of these issues, especially W600, are just incredibly expensive. Given their rarity and beauty, it makes sense. It just puts them out of my reach, especially as I have like 4 other current collecting projects going.

So my question to the knowledge and much more experienced folks here is, if someone (me) wanted to get into collecting Exhibits and other W/M type cards, what would you recommend? Thanks in advance for any help you can provide to me

Based on you liking cards that have actual photo's.

A Great Set is the 1916 M101-4 and 1916 M101-5 Sporting News Cards.

They have many many HOF'ers. They are photo's of the players. They have blank backs and Different Advertising Backs.

They have 200 cards in each set and 18 different Adv Backs.

Here is a Link with more on the set

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...ndelsohn-sets/

Go through the Oldcardboard.com website to get a brief summary on each set and, generally, a sample image to see if it is a set you are actually interested in. One of the first I found was the W554. Set is loaded with HOFers, small in size, and if you really wanted to get crazy with variations/backprints, you can struggle with those as well.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...bc7c2b12_z.jpg

The M101-2 Sporting News Supplements are great if you are okay with the size. You can get plenty of minor stars and commons under $100. Some iconic photos in there, too.

Also plenty of pre-war actual photographs out there that aren't affiliated with any cards issues. Should be able to get them cheaper, I think. I don't collect them, but I see them all the time.



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I like some of the M101-2s also... They are kind of large but not as bad as some double and triple fold postcards.
The postcard below is 35 inches long..

You can also collect news photos

Have you considered R310 Butterfinger? Bigger names are mildly expensive, but they are obtainable. HOF include Ruth, Gehrig, Johnson, Foxx, and others.

Also the first few series of Wheaties are real photos. Those are relatively cheap.

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M114s are usually inexpensive and look great as long as they aren't trashed. And some even use photos from Conlon. The biggest drawback is that they are an odd size which makes it hard to get frames with the right size mattes for them.

supplements
 

M113 and M114 Baseball Magazine supplements. There are a few hundred of them and it's a good way to get Conlon or Wm Greene photos at a price that is more reasonable than Type I contact prints.... And they look good.
lumberjack

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions so far, extremely helpful and much appreciated

The Sporting News Supplements are a great one.

Also, the Gpoudey and National Chicle wide pen and fine pen premiums of the 1930's. Cards are very cheap in lower grade relative to other sets, and basically just large photos.

Agreed these are a great choice

But I am partial to the 1916 M101-4/5

But either are good

Yes, I just picked up an Ernie Lombardi wide pen. I was happy with the price for a decent looking card.

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Take a look at Fan Craze. At 2.5" x 3.5" they aren't massive, but they are quite a bit bigger than most of the cards from that era and they use the excellent Carl Horner photos used for many T206 portraits and other issues.

These are my favorite non-cards in my collection. They were supplements included with the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper.

The questions I would have for you are: 1) what do you consider a card? 2) are you a set collector? And what era do you prefer?

Many of the suggestions are for premiums or oversized items. If you are a more “traditional” card collector, you might find these unsatisfying, although since you expressed an interest in the W600 cabinets, it seems at least the post-card size sets would fit your criteria. If that is true, the 1921 Exhibits might be a good fit.

If you are a set collector, you should probably forget about m101s, unless you don’t mind being either forever incomplete or laying out six figures for a Ruth rookie. Several of the sets are large–120 to 200 or so cards- and would require a pretty strong commitment. If you want to go that road, then maybe E121-80 fits, although if you get tied up chasing slightly different back variations, then maybe not. A smaller set that you might like is E253 Oxford Confectionery– only 20 cards, but with 70% HOFers, including Ruth, Cobb, Hornsby and Johnson.

The ice cream sets of circa 1928 are also popular, although I’m not crazy about them personally. That starts to move you into another era though, as do the Kashin and then the later Fine & Wide Pens, Gold Medal, etc. These are nice choices too, and are very reasonably priced, but contain a different set of key players. The same can be said for the early Fan Craze cards, which I love, but which some avoid because they are all capless portraits.

Lots of choices--good luck!

I think one of your conditions was affordability. This set took a major price spike in the pandemic. I've seen the Ty Cobb double in price. If you look on ebay, the same cards in extremely poor condition that were $1000 just twelve months ago have all been raised in price to almost $2000.

Rogers Hornsby in this set appears to have tripled in value since the calendar turned to a new year. I'm kicking myself for not picking it up in January.

Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth have rocketed out of my price range.

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The M101-2 Sporting News Supplements had also just seen a recent price surge for some of the superstar players in the Memory Lane auction from just a month or two ago. There was a thread about it you can look up that also talked about how great the set and its images are, and how you can still often find many of the 100 total supplements that comprise the set for aroung $100 or less.

That thread also includes more images from the set you can view. Overall, the supplements average size is approximately in the 7-1/2" - 8-1/2" X 10" range, but there are a couple two-page team photos that are about 16" X 10". To my knowledge, most all the M101-2 photos are unique to thet set. The set is also rather unique in that it contains not just portraits and action shots of current active players, but also duo player images, managers, team owners, league executives, team photos, and even one supplement of four umpires, of which two are in the hall of fame. I also don't know of any other pre-war set that includes Cobb, Wagner, WaJo, Mathewson, Speaker, Lajoie, Cy Young, Joss, and Joe Jackson, all while actively still playing. The set does have an advantage in that respect as it was put out from 1909 to 1913.

The images are great, and personally I think it is the best early image of Joe Jackson out there, especially when compared to the likes of some of his early caramel cards where it looks like he's wearing lipstick.

A lot of other good suggestions as well.

I think my focus when thinking about collecting something like this is to collect something larger than a standard card. As I mentioned, the W600s are beautiful and visually stunning, so that is what drew me into this realm, and I know those are large and extremely expensive, so my aim was really to find something similar, but a few price brackets down.

I really love the look of the M101-2s. From poking around ebay completed sales, it looks like I can find lower ungraded copies for some of them at $100 or less, which is definitely the price range I was focusing on.

One sort of self imposed prerequisite, beyond cost, is that the items I focus on not be incredibly rare/never pop up. I'm already collecting one set where supply of certain cards is extremely limited, so I'm not looking to ramp up the degree of difficulty.

I like the availability of the W462 set, and the cost, but I want to focus on mainly pre-war players at this point. I may expand that and look to grab post-war hall of famers too, but I'm sort of looking for a good entry point and there are TONS of options, so its a tad overwhelming.

For the money, M101-2s would be my vote as well. Affordable, great variety of players, with lots of unique images. A few of the photos were used for other major card issues also which is something I personally enjoy.

Last night I was winding down in a day long online auction and saw a listing for a bunch of 1930s-1950s premiums. I didn't know much about them at all, for all I know they are just random reprints, but the price wasnt too bad, so I bought them on a whim. Anyone know exactly what these are? Looks like a random assortment

Those are various photo pack issues. The ones at the top left and similar of stars with the small dark names are from a 1949 all star pack. The ones with plain writing top right look to be Pirates, Indians and maybe a few other team issues. All around that time frame.

My Suggestion for larger scale "cards" especially if you like W600's is W601's they display great the players and photos are terrific. I have a few and purchased a couple in the past year. I think alot of value for such an early issue. You can focus on a team or player or World series foes. Plenty of ways to collect. Card below is an example ( not mine but I did bid on it recently.

1899-1900 M101-1 The Sporting News Supplements would be the best long term investment IMO. This set includes the Honus Wagner rookie.

https://oldcardboard.com/m/m101-1/m1...?cardsetID=961


Also the 1909-13 M101-2 Sporting News Supplements still somewhat affordable and have become very popular of late, led by the early image of Ty Cobb. This set is loaded with HOFers.

https://oldcardboard.com/m/m101-2/m1...?cardsetID=962

Supplements have always been a bit of a nitche, but are moving more mainstream like postcards did 10-15 years ago.

JC is right re supplements and premiums. They have long been a backwater. I was amazed at how I could go through a National as recently as 2019 and buy multiple superstars for $20-$50 all day long. Still is to a good extent. I picked up a Hubbell premium for under $20 last week. Makes sense they're ripe for a surge in demand: you can't or wont pay thousands for a 1954 Bowman Mantle card but you can pick up a 1954 All Star Photo Pack Mantle for a small percentage of that cost.

I really appreciate all the feedback and discussion in this thread, it has given me a lot of stuff to go and look for and research in more detail.

I think I am going to start to keep my eyes open for the M101-2s at this point. The images are just beautiful. As I've been researching I've also been reading a lot about postcard issues, and it feels like I am dangerously close to falling down the rabbit hole here. Can't get too crazy in the beginning.

For post-war exhibits and premiums, I think I will stick to Hall of Famers if I see cool stuff pop up. I really love the Williams/DiMaggio/Rizzuto images above, which is why I bought that lot, and it seems like it was a decent purchase.

Larger items can be fun to collect... (large picture on purpose)

https://luckeycards.com/beer3.jpg

Thanks for sharing Leon.

You definitely have an amazing and diverse collection.

You know that’s Cy Young in the early days bottom left wearing the tie ya know. :D

It does look a little bit like him.,. :)