Louis Heilbroner informational index card
 

Community,

I would like to research and be able to write a report about Louis Heilbroner informational index cards because I obtained few 1940's index cards that happened to be deaf players. I felt those are one of great find of mine.

Where can I find out more about Louis' doing with those information. I look forward to learn more about this and come up with a great story.

Thanks!
Danny

The Heilbroner Baseball Bureau was established in 1909 and collected data and statistical info of professional players. Much of this information was the foundation of the Heilbroner Blue Books, which were published and marketed primarily to baseball insiders during the early-mid 20th century. Mostly consisting of 3 x 5 index cards with abbreviated stat / notations and questionnaires, which were larger and more detailed. Most of the questionnaires came from Karl Wingler, a dedicated Heilbroner employee who assembled thousands of these questionnaires (most filled out in the player's hand). The 3 x 5's were sold (many decades ago) to SABR co-founder Ray Nemec who used them as the basis for his player profiles / and lifetime records. Nemec passed away a few years ago and the index cards were broken down

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are they 1/1? Would some players have few index cards filled up?

I have obtained Richard Sipek, Ben Wade, Bill Voiselle, and George Binks.

Essentially the way this worked was that a blank card with the players name typed at the top was sent to a player during his first year of pro ball, or if he was a good college player they would be sent to him in college and even high school. He would fill this out and then it would updated every season on the back with the current teams etc. They would sometimes send cards years later with updated information to the players with printed information and ask for revisions or updated info. A few of the players in the collection had 2-3 cards, filled out at various times in their careers, but each card is a unique 1/1 for sure and the earliest ones would be of the greatest importance. They are some of the coolest pieces of memorabilia ever to hit the hobby in my opinion!

FWIW, I would totally agree with what Rhys just said.
Each one of these is totally unique, whereas IMHO the ones with extensive hand written info by the player can offer a unique look at facts about them that you may not easily find elsewhere.

So far I have purchased 3 of these cards from the seller, but I find myself looking daily at what new ones are being listed... :cool:

I`m with you guys on these items. Have seen them pop up on EBAY from time to time and did purchase a Bib Faulk about 6 weeks ago. Liked the Faulk so much grabbed 3 more, Rube Walberg,George Blaeholder and Charlie Root. As mentioned a rather unique way to collect pieces of player/baseball history especially when many of the items contain a lot of hand written information.

When did the Heilbroner cards stop being updated or sent out to players?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

Pretty geeked. Just purchased my first signed Heilbroner survey card
 

Just purchased my first Heilbroner survey card off of eBay (Tex Covington) from a seller well known to me for years. Have dealt with seller/collector (gregg57 - Gregg Borucki) off and on over the past 15 years or so. I remember regularly losing out when bidding against him on eBay :-) One notable loss was a single-signed Orlin Collier minor league baseball. I did have the pleasure to first meet face-to-face with Gregg on the floor of the 2007 National Show in Cleveland, at dealer Phillip Mark's booth. At that time, he indicated that he had nearly completed his set of 1950-date (2007) major league ballplayers autographs. He was beginning to work on expanding his autographs collection to include the prior years of 1901 – 1949 (Jim Stinson once stated there was a time when several collectors pursued obtaining the autographs of all players since the beginning of the 20th century, but that now there were very few of those collectors around). More recently, turns out that Gregg was the successful bidder on the Jack Smalling autograph collection lot, in Heritage’s May 2018 auction (his Heilbroner collection of cards were not included in the Smalling Collection purchase).

I am extremely pleased to have (finally) executed the first addition of 2019 to my vintage Detroit Tigers autograph collection. At a point in my journey where crossing off just one name on my autograph collection “wanted list” is reason for celebration. So this year, Tex Covington will have his name crossed off my list :-)

On a separate thought, not sure if this was covered in earlier Net54 Old Cardboard discussion threads or not. Probably was, but I am unable to locate that thread. Anyways, one observation I had while looking through the many Heilbroner survey cards Gregg has listed in his eBay Store are described as "signed", when the “signature” is actually the printed version of the ballplayer's name (presumably printed by the ballplayer himself). It dawned on me that I had never considered "signed" or "signature" to mean anything other than a self-written, cursive version of one's name. Forgotten were the stories of how a ballplayer might “sign” his Players Contract with a carefully printed version of his name, or possibly even “X” on the dotted line. Must admit I am a little ashamed at how narrow minded I have become over the years. But I am pleased that the Heilbroner survey card I purchased has the presence of a cursive version of the ballplayer’s signature. For that reason, plus a generous discount offered by the seller (Gregg), I was properly motivated to purchase this item.

Vincent,
Congrats on landing one of your White Whales! :D:cool:

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Thanks Scott. Very much appreciated.

I only discovered these a couple of years ago. I was lucky enough to find one of Billy Pierce's cards for my Pierce collection. A neat oddball addition.

I don’t have any of the index cards but I have a 1936 heilbroner yearbook owned by someone in the Dodgers organization. It contains the addresses of all the major league players.