[Seven]

Originally Posted by bcbgcbrcb

Derek: I know that you meant 1922 Exhibits for Klem and Evans.

I consider Exhibits to be cards/rookie cards. They were sold individually in vending machines with the intent to try and assemble a set, are catalogued, made of thick card stock, have a strong collector base and include the ‘25 Gehrig, which has routinely sold for 6-figures in recent years, prices typically reserved for “cards” as opposed to other types of paper collectibles.

Only a decade ago, when the Gehrig was selling in the low 4-figures, I was strongly promoting this card as the definitive Gehrig RC (amidst the resistance of many who did not feel that a postcard-size item should even be considered as a card) as the year of issue can be pinpointed to 1925 specifically as opposed to the only other option, the W590, which was issued in more than one printing although the Gehrig card itself was initially released on a 1925 strip of 10 cards. Putting it out there on the OldCardboard site, including it in the OCB magazine article that I wrote on the subject as well as including it with the rookie card guides that I self-published during the mid-2010’s, I believe, may have played a significant role in enough collectors jumping on the Gehrig RC bandwagon to see values escalate 30X, 50X, even 100X in high grade.

This is why I believe that the more definitively we can identify some of these pre-war treasures as rookie cards, the more we can see values of those cards escalate, maybe not to the level of an all-time great like Gehrig, but certainly much higher than they are today, even after the recent card boom. I think we have started to see it with the Jimmy Foxx Exhibit RC already.

Not that I'm anti-exhibit, but I think the main issue with the exhibit's in my opinion is that they aren't the prototypical card like you stated. They're the size of a post card. Regardless of how they were sold.

It's fascinating to me that the early 1900's through the the 1910's, we had many mediums for cards, but most of them coming through cigarettes, and cracker jacks at a later date. I wonder why the shift happened, for cards to stop being included in cigarettes? I'm sure some of the Tobacco card historians on the forum could answer my question.