Posted By:
Mark MacraeBob....As Barry pointed out, Bill Haber was one of the hobby's super collectors, long before the term existed. In addition to collecting the cards, he avidly researched the obscure players, sometimes spending more time researching a player than the ENTIRE CAREER of the player in question. Although I never met him in person, the times we communicated were always pleasant & would always end with one of us (usually me) walking away with a handfull of trivia about some guy that few people cared about. He worked for Topps, at some point, researching and writing the player biographies on the backs of cards and amassed a huge collection over several decades. He died at a relatively young age and his collection was auctioned by Bill Mastro during the brief period that he had partnered with Don Steinbach in the mid-late 90's. His style of collecting, attitude and hobby integrity would be on par with John England, who you know...... Bill Mastro, Larry Fritsch, Lew Lipset or Rob LIfson would be more qualified than myself in citing Haber's numerous contributions to the hobby.......Peter, without seeing the specific marks, there are dozens of different "fingerprints" left behind on cards which were originally marketed here in Northern California. Many cards from those collections were brought into the hobby by close friends of mine, or myself over the years and many will have passed through my hands 10 or more times already. I always look at the marks on Zeenuts when they come in, just to see if I've owned them before. I've been tempted (but haven't executed the thought yet) to mark the cards I've owned on the back with invisible ink just to save me processing time when they come in....