When is a Card Not a Card?
 

Let me begin with a disclaimer: I only collect vintage baseball cards. Well, I do have a couple of vintage football card sets, but you get the picture . . . no autographs, no memorabilia - just cards for me.

Having grown up during the '60s and '70s, pretty much all I knew about were the Topps issues. So to me, a baseball was made of card stock thick enough to be stacked together with others and small enough for several to be held together in one hand. During my teen years I expanded my horizons by bidding on truly vintage cards through Frank Nagy's mail auctions. Those were great! But I recall being disappointed one time when I won an Old Butterfinger poster (around 6"X8") that was too large and an original Cracker Jack card that looked very cool, but was way too thin. I had a hard time storing those along with the regular vintage cards in my collection like the older Topps, Bowman, and T206 issues, and never really considered them to be "true" baseball cards.

I realize I'm probably in the fringe minority about these arbitrary standards, but I'm just wondering what others may think about what actually constitutes a baseball card. Your thoughts?

I'm with you on a lot of those points. I don't consider "paper thin" products cards....(thinking here that "card" means "cardboard"). I also don't consider postcards...baseball cards, they are baseball POSTcards. I also don't collect autos, and avoid autos on cards...I feel it ruins and defaces them. I think the hobbys definitions should be tighter not looser. Ok rant over:) Dave.

David, I felt the same way about postcards for a long time.

But then one day I found a rare postcard with the first appearance of a HOF'er, and it became monetarily convenient to think of it as a baseball card.

I understand the discussion, but to me as a type collector, almost everything is a card. And I, along with a large percentage of collectors on this board, also collected in the late 60's and 70s...when there were Topps and ....more Topps.....Those were great days....


http://luckeycards.com/pe286chance300dpi2.jpg

sounds like you had a 1914 Cracker jack in your hands...super thin stock, even compared to the 1915...that is surely a "card" even though it didn't stack so well...you still have it?

They are all cards to me
 

If it was intended or desired to be saved or collected, and its made using paper or cardboard, it's a card to me. Individual pictures in newspapers or magazines would not qualify in my book, unless they were intended or desired to be removed, saved separately, and collected.

Vintage Cracker Jacks
 

No I don't. It was a card of Rariden. And I would have felt cheated as a kid in 1914 opening a package of Cracker Jacks just to get that "card." I know I'm treading on scared ground here, but had I been a kid in 1914 I would have had to beg my dad for a cigar box just to store those Cracker Jack issues. Think about it - kids couldn't even bind them together loosely with rubberbands without causing serious damage. Forget about playing games like "flip-em."

Compare to the early '90s CJ cards, which would also make for difficult flipping and a rubber band would totally cover? :) But I get your point.

Just curious. Where the 1914/15 CJs even marketed/listed as "cards" on the box? Or player pictures? Does anyone have a photo of an actual CJ box from back then they could share?

Everyone, may I have your attention! Please follow Dave's lead and stop collecting paper thin baseball cards!




Especially those horribly paper-thin Mello Mints... :D

I believe that collecting vintage pre-war cards isn’t best judged by the definition of the word ‘card’ by post-war adolescents whose almost overwhelming supply of baseball player likenesses were distributed on cardboard. If you are collecting post-war baseball cards then I can see a desire to collect strictly cardboard.

But if you are passionately collecting pre-war ‘cards’ I think you are in a vast minority if you only pursue standard weight and sized cardboard. Also, to say that the word ‘card’ is short for cardboard and defines the hobby would be a bit cavalier. I would think it would be rather ballzy to call up J.R. Burdick (at the time) and start a conversation that he incorrectly named the American Card Catalog because it contains silks, blankets, chips, disks, flimsy paper, ‘oversized’ cards, etc.

I think if you are collecting pre-war you are more inclined to embrace the ACC and its abundant variety. If you are a type collector, like me, it would be insane to be a cardboard only type collector while using the ACC as your general index for pre-war cards. If you only collect thick, stackable cardboard of a generally established maximum size of approximately 3” x 4”, you would exclude the majority of the ACC.

I am not sure why there is a need to define card collecting with a rigid majority standard. It is what you decide it is to you. If you want to collect HOF members you can go hard core and narrowly define your standards. You can also broadly collect HOF members and obtain any item, including post cards and maybe even press photo’s. It isn’t like the professor gives us a grade based on one criteria when our quest is complete.

So, my answer to “when is a card a card?” would be that it is irrelevant.

Good answer!

(1) The word "postcard" contains the word "card".
(2) An image of a baseball player can be printed on the front of a postcard.
(3) If an image of a baseball player is printed on the front of a postcard, it is now a baseball player postcard.
(4) The phrase "baseball <strike>player</strike> <strike>post</strike>card" can be reduced to "baseball card".
(5) Therefore, a baseball player postcard is a baseball card.

I guess I'm pretty ballsy, because I believe Burdick got A LOT of stuff wrong.
After all he was a pioneer in a primitive field. If the advantages we have today were available to him things would have been done different, and IMO more correctly. Dave.

Great summary.

But when is a card, not a card? IMO only when a larger piece of cardboard has been trimmed to accommodate a player photo/sig, such as this heavy stock cardboard ca. 1949-50 Joe Orengo sig with a disembodied head at the bottom of the card, and Frank O'Douls name at top (about card size). Love to know what PCL, WIL league poster this came from.

http://i1074.photobucket.com/albums/...ps83fa6141.jpg

Opening a can of worms :D

...See next

Yep......who needs those paper thin things like 1921 Tip Top Bread......just junk..........Ill take the junk

................................
Manny from Miami...interesting use of Transitive Property with Baseball cards.


(from Kendall myself years ago.....You?)

They are referred to as "baseball picture cards" on the reverse of the advertising poster sold by REA in 2009. It is interesting that for the first part of the writeup, they are referred to as only "pictures".

Still, I think it is hobby blasphemy to say 1914 CJs are not "cards". :eek: :p

http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/...em_11431_2.jpg

Your logic would also apply to i.d. cards such as passports and drivers licenses.

People can rationalize anything if it works to their advantage. A previous post had someone rationalizing photographs into the mix :confused:

A postcard is actually a postcard. A baseball player postcard would be a baseball player postcard.

Luckily for those of us who have been around for enough of these debates, we already have our own thoughts, and given that we are talking about vintage items that have been discussed for decades, it's doubtful that any of us will change our opinions. We are all post-war adolescents, so our thinking about this is actually quite relevant...since we are the only group doing the thinking and discussing.

I was originally from Hialeah.
Lived in Kendall for a few years when I went to FIU.


Runscott - Find me Honus Wagner's I.D. card or Ty Cobb's passport card and it'll be collected here as if it were a card.

Pre-WWII baseball player's driver license card = baseball card.

:)

I actually agree that it doesn't matter, but lots of things don't matter to me - that doesn't mean I can't figure out the answer.

The 1915 Cracker Jacks appear, to me, to be just as thin as the 1914s. The only way I can tell them apart is by the upside down text on the reverse.

1914s are much thinner....if you have each year in your hand at the same time it is easily seen

How about those game cards? Another can of worms . . .