1958: the first sports collectors' convention, hosted by Lionel Carter
 

On Wednesday, July 9, 1958, Lionel Carter and his wife Irma hosted a gathering of seven sports collectors, including Lionel himself, at their home in Evanston, Illinois. The purpose was to get together to talk, trade, display their collections, and go to a Cubs-Pirates game at Wrigley Field the following day. Depending on your definition, it was arguably the first-ever sports collectors' convention, two years after Bob Jaspersen's failed attempt to organize a convention in Chicago with the help of Carter and John Sullivan. (I wrote about that failed 1956 convention, including Jaspersen's many articles about it in Sport Fan, here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=221393.)

In contrast to Jaspersen's planned convention, which involved renting a venue, charging table fees, and awarding door prizes, Carter's get-together was an invitation-only affair for advanced collectors he already knew. He invited a total of 10 people besides himself, but Jefferson Burdick, Preston Orem, Elwood Scharf, and James McLean couldn't come. The seven who did come were Carter himself; Charles Bray, editor of Card Collector's Bulletin; Bill Leonard, Chicago Tribune writer and 19th-century baseball collector; Buck Barker, who came from St. Louis; Bob Wilson; Bob Solon of Oak Park, a longtime hobby writer and part-time dealer; and program collector John Sullivan, who had helped Carter with the local arrangements for the failed 1956 convention. The July-August 1958 Sport Fan has an article by Bob Jaspersen (which I posted last night here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=227451) about the Carters' visit to the Jaspersens, and Lionel Carter's plans for his get-together.

This convention of Carter's was apparently a success for the attendees, but it would be more than a decade before the next such convention would be held, on August 23, 1969 in Brea, California at the home of Jim Nowell, using Carter's invitation-only model. (My post about that 1969 convention is here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=221671.) As in so many other ways, Carter was ahead of his time. He made an unsuccessful attempt to organize another convention in Chicago in 1965 (see below), but as far as I know it didn't pan out. When conventions successfully took hold in the 1970s, Carter was an early and enthusiastic attendee.

That 1958 mini-convention seems to have been mostly forgotten, but not entirely. In an article in the November 1968 Sports Collectors News (which I posted in this thread: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=218969), Fred Taylor lamented the lack of sports collecting conventions and gave a confused description of Carter's 1958 get-together, which he may have been conflating with Jasperson's abortive 1956 show. (As I mentioned in the original post, from the context Taylor obviously meant "We have *not* had a successful convention of sports collectors"):

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In 2006 George Vrechek interviewed Bob Solon for Sports Collectors' Digest, and among much else Solon provided some reminiscences of the 1958 Carter convention. His memory played some tricks on him -- he thought the event was in September rather than July, and that there were only 4 people there rather than 7 -- but he remembered some interesting details. Here is the relevant paragraph of the article, which you can read in full here: http://oldbaseball.com/refs/Bob_Solon.pdf.

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Finally, and most accurately, another of the attendees, Buck Barker (under the pseudonym "Red Byrd") did a nice writeup about the Carter convention almost immediately for the September-October 1958 Sport Fan, from which I got the above information about it. I doubt that many people have read Barker's account in the last 58 years, but here it is. Sounds like a fun time was had by all. Following that, as a bonus, is Carter's short item from the August 1, 1965 Card Collector's Bulletin about his attempt at another convention, which apparently came to naught; not until 1973 did the Chicagoland Collectors' Association have the first of their many shows.

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Thanks for posting these, David. "Five or Six" collectors sounds like me and a few friends in a hotel bar after a (current) National, not a convention :). But I am sure those guys were having a blast just the way we do.

It must have been SO great to be a collector before the hobby really exploded. Just think about what would have been available to you if you knew where to look.

Great insight, thanks for posting. A handful of enthusiastic buddies getting together with the fabled Wags in tow! That would have made an incredible video.

Well, they had to start somewhere. Carter invited 10 people and got six, plus himself; 11 years later, Jim Nowell and Ed Broder were expecting 20 and got 13 at their first convention, even after Richard Burns of The Sports Trader gave them the names and addresses of several hundred west coast collectors. It was just a matter of timing. As I said, Carter was ahead of his time.

So was Charles Bray -- having his Wagner in "a type of picture frame" seems like a proto-slab, or maybe a proto-screwdown holder.