1948 Exhibit Baseball HOF Display Slicks (Gehrig, Grove, etc.)
 

These are paper versions of the cards made on glossy paper. They are exact replicas of the cards. They were made to be pasted onto header cards for the machines. I suspect that ESCO made them because paper is cheaper and lighter than cardboard, and when you are making and mailing tens of thousands of these a year, every penny shaved off the cost counts.

The earliest sports-related slicks I know of are from the 1940s; the latest are from the 1960s. I have seen them for all sports and for the 1940s Champions set too. They are much harder to find than their corresponding cards.

I have a small group of these available for sale; all have back staining indicative of having once been mounted to a header. I can only surmise from the clean condition of the fronts that the glue weakened over the years and they just fell off the cardboard mounts.

Gehrig is $50, Grove is $40, the rest are $25 each, all postpaid. PayPal OK (adam@warshawlaw.net).

First to post here as to a specific card gets it.

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...ize/img946.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...ize/img949.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...ize/img951.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...ize/img953.jpg