Card Collector's Bulletin, 2/1/59: Notes from J. R. Burdick, Preston Orem on T216
 

Here are the first four pages and the last three pages (out of 20 pages total) from Card Collector's Bulletin #118, dated February 1, 1959. The front page article is "Personal Notes from J. R. Burdick", including his discovery of a new T-card set (T309 Jumping Novelties) and tips for people going to see his cards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the staff had apparently already started to mount them. On page 2 is a note from editor Charles Bray about the timing of the next auction, and about some "interesting and rare cards" from his collection, which are pictured on the facing page and the page after that. They include two T217s, a blank-back T204, a T206 Ty Cobb back, and the T231 Carson Bigbee.

On page 18, the third to last page, is an article by Preston Orem about T216s (presumably the first article written about that set), with a checklist of 70, up from the 40 listed in the World Tobacco Issues index.

In this issue, the list of lots in Bray's auction (which he called a "Mail Card Sale") started on page 5 and then skipped around to pages 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, and 20, with the other pages filled mostly with ads, plus Orem's article. The first 324 lots in the auction were all postcards, which are not of much interest to me, but the last two pages, following Orem's T216 article, include the sports cards, including several lots of T206s, T205s, T209s, T211s, T212s, and much else. The prices shown here were the catalogue prices, or Bray's estimate of what the cards in each lot were worth; actual prices realized were given in the following issue. In my run of CCBs from 1954-56, somebody (I assume the original owner) wrote prices realized in pencil next to a lot of the lots, but in this one someone (a different hand) has only written prices realized next to a few lots, in pen.

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Great stuff!!!
 

Thanks for sharing this and all the other ones too these past couple weeks; I am writing a check to Jay Lerner as we speak for 100 each of all of his "SPECIALS"; I hope he's still at that address and that he honors those prices!!:D

Agree with above post these are fun to read. Thanks for taking time to post them David.
Larry

I was just crunching a few of the numbers from Bray's estimated values for the T206s in the auction for this issue. He had 185 different AL T206s in excellent condition with an estimated value of $11.56, and 176 different NL T206s in excellent condition for $11.00, both of which are 6.25 cents a card. Then he has several lots of poor to good condition T206s (175 different AL and NL, 91 different AL, 155 different NL) valued at 5 cents a card. So in Bray's estimation, T206s in excellent condition only commanded a premium of 25% over those in poor to good condition. Obviously that premium is exponentially higher today. On the other hand, Bray valued 26 different T206 Southern Leaguers in poor to good condition at $6.50, or 25 cents a card, five times the value of major leaguers. Although SLers are still more expensive than major leaguers, that spread has narrowed a lot since 1959.

you mention: " In my run of CCBs from 1954-56, somebody (I assume the original owner) wrote prices realized in pencil next to a lot of the lots, but in this one someone (a different hand) has only written prices realized next to a few lots, in pen."

might these be prices the person bid instead of realized? when i look at the prices written on this issue and the other issue you recently so kindly listed i have a suspicion that these might be what someone wished to bid for these items - hoping to get bargains????.

just a guess.

all the best

No, those are prices realized. Each issue shows the prices realized for the auction in the previous issue, and they correspond to the prices written in pencil. I don't have the issue after this one from 1959, but I do have the issue following the other one I posted, #93 from 1/1/55. It shows that the prices realized for lot 120, the 468 different T206s, and lot 121, the 48 different T206 Southern Leaguers, were $12.00 and $9.00, the amounts written in pencil next to the lots. I have 11 consecutive issues from #92 to #102, and the same is true in all of them.

yikes, glad you could clarify. so, many of the card lots sold even cheaper then the already low appearing estimate in many cases, just not easy to find other collectors in the early days to help with the bid competition.

thanks for the follow up and posting the old issues.

regards