Big thanks to everyone who contributed to this latest discussion of Mel Bailey's contribution to the hobby. We did get some good information here. I think Mel Bailey should get more credit for having produced the Omaha Dodgers set (beyond Net54, anyway), so I'm going to try to get that fixed.
His and Bud Ackerman's part in bringing Menko cards to the U.S. is worth knowing, and I had a lot of fun looking at the scans. In a perfect world, I'd be rich beyond my wildest dreams and be collecting Menkos along with everything else I blow my money on, but it's probably not going to happen.
And I was are of Mel's RPPCs; I have 40-50 of my own (all Pirates), which is what inspired my initial post. There's a lot of misinformation concerning the RPPCs out there: cards being attributed to Brace or Burke that have Rowe's printing on the back (and I understand why this is, of course) as well as Bailey's cards being attributed to Rowe (or nobody because Bailey's not that well known). Not to mention all the lots being advertised as postcards that are actually just prints.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to pin down when he started and stopped selling his RPPCs. I'll keep digging. In the meantime, anyone who has Mel Bailey postcards knows that he almost always included the year the photo was taken, which is a clue for us. All of mine are dated between 1970 and 1979, but I've read that Mel was active basically from sometime in the 1950s until sometime in the 1990s. There's a Bobby Thomson dated 1950 on eBay right now, but when he started selling that image as postcard is still a mystery. I've also come across several Mel Bailey postcards dated 1993 but none later, at least not so far. If anyone has a Bailey postcard with a date of 1994 or later, that could help establish one end of the bracket.
The quest continues. Thanks again, everyone.
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