Posted By:
brian pI have a couple of favorite Barker cards. The first is a mid 20's Zeenut whose reverse has a very colorful 'wet-transfer' strip card-like image of James Cagney. There is about 1/4" border surrounding this image on all sides, and this is where Mr. Barker filled completely with notes on the player on the front of the card.
The second is even more special as it shows what lengths and how important his research was into identifying the players of earlier issues. It is a 1925 of Haughy of San Francisco. The back lists about eight possible variations of 'Haughy' from Hughes to Hough that he indicated he had checked in The Sporting News files trying to locate the identity of the player in question, with a final notation that 'can't find TSN'. My bet is that this player is still unidentified by first name in any of the catalogs (which of course shows how lax my own research is that I couldn't even find out if his full name is listed in the catalogs).
I view Buck Barker's scribble cards as an added value, not a downgrade.
Brian