New member, R309-1 Ruth question
 

I found this forum while trying to figure out what this was, along with some other 1933/34 cards (baseball & non-sports, those questions are next). I found a couple of posts here that had some neat info, but am curious as to how many of these were made since you had to send in for them. I did a quick google search, but didn't find any information. I noticed someone else posted a picture of one in better shape, but with push pin holes in almost the same spot.

Thanks
mike

I absolutely love these and have one. Will be curious to see if anyone has a guess as to production numbers, but seems like it will be really hard to estimate.

Nice card and welcome to the forum Mike. Im not well versed in the issue but I'm confident you'll find your answers amongst the members here.

Welcome to Fantasy Island, Mike.

I do not know the answer to your question, but I have always wanted one of those.

Doug

My sense is that there aren’t that many of them out there. My giants team:

card
 

General impression is that the team cards are rarer than the Ruth.... maybe even all of them together arent seen as much as the Ruth by itself. Just my observation, no hard data to back it up. All that said, I think the thing is massively undervalued considering the pose and the year of issue..... must be a fraction of the total of Goudey Ruth cards which sell for a ton more. You have a great item there in my opinion. As far as the pinholes go, thats the way kids used to display cards and paper items on an old fashioned cork board or just on a bedpost or a wall. Even T3s have frequently suffered the same fate although those seem to be more in the corners.

I see a lot more Ruth cards than any of the others. As the only single player in the Goudey version, I suspect it was the most demanded card by a large margin.

Here's my set(no pinholes!!) - sorry for the scans, the BVG holder images distort a bit when I scanned them in.

Thanks everyone for the responses, I kind of figured there were not a lot out compared to the cards that year since they were a special run and you had to mail in for them.

I will throw a somewhat wild guess number out since you asked and no one really has any way to know for sure.

I found a page that estimated the Goudey Ruth #53 (yellow) had a print run of around 360,000. About 1200 are in the PSA population report, meaning that 1 out of every 300 Babe Ruth #53 cards that were made ended up in the PSA population report.

So, there are 55 of the Babe Ruth R309-1 cards in the PSA population report. If we were to also assume the same ratio that 1 out of every 300 of these ended up in the report, then that would result in around 16,500 as the total made.

But did people submit these to PSA at the same rate as the standard Goudey cards, did they survive the ensuing years of storage at the same rate? Who knows. And I'm sure there are tons of other variables in play. We'll probably never know, but there's a number for you to consider...just for fun.

Thanks for throwing those numbers out there! Now that I know what it is, I find the history behind it so neat. (also knowing the history of the original owner of the card where it came from is cool too)

It really is interesting about these. We've had this for a long time, and just now figured out who made it. The lack of any writing on it other than the his name, and the easel on the back made it look like something other than a "card."

I think the production run for R309-1 was the same for every card. Weren't they redeemed as a set of four? But, the Ruth card probably survived in greater numbers.

No, you did not get the full set of 4. You had to choose which one you wanted for your 50 wrappers.

Thanks for the info.

Goudey offered Ruth as their wrapper mail-in premium earlier in 1933, before the events (All-Star Game and World Series) that created their other three R309-1 cards. See the first wrapper for Ruth alone.

They then added AL & NL team cards after the success of that year's (first) All-Star Game. See the second wrapper for Ruth + teams.

When the Giants won that year's World Series, Goudey added their final R309-1 card and updated wrappers with all four choices for the last series of 1933 baseball cards. See the third wrapper. This is also when then removed the Nov 1933 redemption deadline, since World Series cards _arrived_ around then. It appears Goudey still had plenty of their other R309-1 cards left!

Put those together and you get more Ruth cards thanks to overall demand and yearlong availability.

KILLER Piece! Not rare at all. I had 6 at 1 time.

Dan

Still great pieces and one of the more affordable Ruth pieces