1940s-50s photo packs.
 

The photos packs that were handed out at Major League parks during the 1940s-50s...are there any catalogs for these? And where they just available from the parks, or could you buy them, order them from the mail? Thanks

Yes, you could order them by mail. I have a 1961 Yankees yearbook. Inside there is a page of all kinds of souvenirs you could send off for, including photo packs.

Thank you, I have a collection of 184 baseball photos from the 1940s. I have been told they could be everything from photos packs to photostats. Some of the images on photos do match some baseball cards. 1947 Bond Homogenized Bread, 1950s Berk Ross, 1952 Hit Parade of Champions, and the 1950 R 423 cards....with all those matches it is hard to nail down what I have. And I even have a W 462 1939 match of Andy Pafko, he is the only match I found so far in the W 462 set of BB cards.

A Krause Publications Standard Catalog or one of their Vintage Baseball Cards books has some of them. They are scattered throughout based on issuer name (e.g., a Cleveland Indians team issued pack will be under "Cleveland" rather than under "Picture Pack"). As far as I know, there is no comprehensive treatise on the subject. I've been assembling data to take a run at one but so far haven't even started it. Maybe if I can retire some day. I know it would sell literally handfuls of copies :)

Note: experience and comments are based on research of the Boston Red Sox only

The Red Sox Photo packs from the initial 1940 set to the 1954 set are fairly straight forward. There were many years of duplicate photos (i.e. 1946 Sox and 1947 Sox used the exact photos, just varied in a few players added or removed).

The real challenge starts on the Team photos that started in 1957 with the "Jay Publishing-like" and "Jay Publishing" photos. The Red Sox at this point started keeping their sets with "real-time" players, often releasing 2, 3, 5 different photo sets in a single season. Again the individual player photos rarely ever changed, but the pack of 12-photos during these years can be vastly different. I believe I have 6 different 12-photo variations of the 1960 Jay Publishing Red Sox set alone.

(Hate being a variation guy; costs me too much money)
Dave

Thanks to all, is there any way to tell if you have photos packs or something else.