Info needed on 1939 centennial first day covers showing inductees.
 

I've tried researching these to no avail, I can only find a few examples of covers showing players (can't find any that look like this?). Tried to contact Steve who runs the 1939 centennial site but based on past messages not getting a reply I'm not expecting this one to.

I've seen the regular generic non player covers sell for very little, seems like $10-$20. But I mean a Babe Ruth covers gotta be worth something?

Thanks for your help!!https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...0206f61113.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...8fa1cfa897.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...81af5817ca.jpg

Player shown are

Honus Wagner, abner doubleday, ty cobb, christy mathewson, grover alexander, walter johnson

Maybe list them on the BST for $500 each and see what happens?

His website is still up
 

But, and this could merely be a rumor, i heard within the last year or so that Steve may have passed. He has not been at the last November Shriners show or two and he was always sitting a few booths down from the popcorn/candy vendor.

There are even versions of the Baseball Centennial covers with little photos of the players.


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I will revise that...
 

Steve has passed. He was always a pleasure to talk to and very generous with his knowledge of all things Centennial related:

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries...ry?id=36791218

Thank you all for the comments. Didn't know that he passed away, I'm happy to see his site is still up.

Don't think I've ever seen these before.

Wow, that is a nice item, Jeff.

I had no idea of the breadth of these covers until i ran across one at a paper fair, bought it, and started researching. This must've been a really big deal among stamp/FDC collectors in 1939 because there are literally hundreds of different designs.

I collected FDCs as a kid. Was a lot of fun buying the engraved envelopes and then sending them around the country to get stamped. Unfortunately today 99.9999% of them have basically no value. I was stunned to see how little people were getting for huge collections of FDCs on eBay. These baseball ones are really cool.

People also would take them too Cooperstown to get them autographed by that year’s inductees


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This quote is on the top of the site’s homepage:

"We collect memories, storing them in our top bureau drawer or carefully packing them away in a box in the attic. These mementos are reflections of events especially meaningful to us. We pull them out on occasion to help us recall those memories; rarely shared or understood by others. Over time, we stop opening the box; the need for a physical reminder diminishes, and decades pass. We move on and the mysterious box, lying undisturbed in the attic corner, is forgotten. We pass away and our memories - the ephemera of a time gone by is sold in a yard sale or on ebay and that history and meaning is lost, forever." - Stephen Kennedy

Stamp collecting got really big in the 1930s and 1940s, due to the fact that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a stamp collector himself. Into the 1980s, stamp and first day cover collecting was still fairly large; I feel it was even bigger than coin collecting.

By the 1990s-2000s, stamp collecting started dying out because people could not keep up with the massive number of different stamps the USPS was issuing. Then with the advent of the internet, and electronic payments severely reducing the amount of bills people needed to pay by mail, stamp collecting fell even further.

Steve

The baseball first day covers have some value mostly driven by sports collectors.

Steve D - Pretty much. Add in people buying loads of full sheets as "investments" then being disappointed when trying to sell only to find that dealers already had all they needed and would pay maybe 50% of the face value as "discount postage"
The catalog prices with an early 80s debacle and a general misunderstanding of what they represent didn't help.
Scott inflated catalog values until sometime in the late 70's or early 80's so people could see steady gains that were way out of line with reality. Then reduced them to real world levels suddenly. (Pretty much everyone would sell at half catalog or lower. )
The catalog value is supposed to represent a retail price for an example in a very nice condition. Most are not that nice. The catalog price for cheap stuff represents the price a dealer would charge if you wanted one of that exact stamp, and mostly represents the cost of labor sorting it and putting it in a priced holder. So that stamp bought new for 50cents with a catalog value of $1 isn't really worth $1. Trust me, I've tried....

Stuff in bulk rarely brings anywhere near catalog value. I have a box of 1890's stamps put up in bundles of 100. 54,000 stamps the cheapest version has a $1 catalog value. So CV=$54,000. And of course, if the one I opened is typical about 25% of them are as much as $5
I paid $50 along with a bunch of other stuff. I would be insanely happy to get half catalog of the cheapest ones. Or even 1/8.....

M.C. Kidney sounds like a new PR campaign wherein the Kidney Foundation is trying to capture the attention of a younger demographic, 35 years too late.

Give it up for MC Kidneeeeyyyy!!!!

I see dealers at fleas and ephemera shows with tons of stamps and they sell for nothing. Last show i was at a guy offered me two gigantic notebooks of 1970s-1980s FDCs for $25 each, and he even admitted that no one wants them.

i will occasionally pick up an old book of stamps if they are a buck or two. They're interesting, just not valuable.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pcwAA...g/s-l1600.webp

I see dealers at fleas and ephemera shows with tons of stamps and they sell for nothing. Last show i was at a guy offered me two gigantic notebooks of 1970s-1980s FDCs for $25 each, and he even admitted that no one wants them.

i will occasionally pick up an old book of stamps if they are a buck or two. They're interesting, just not valuable.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pcwAA...g/s-l1600.webp