Video highlighting the find:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91g3pgK7d_Q
Recently a gentleman from outside the hobby reached out to me with a collection of Zeenut cards that he had inherited from his great uncle (I believe) whose parents had operated a corner grocery store in Northern California for many years in the early part of the 20th Century. His great uncle was a young boy and he imagined he would get these cards from his parents or possibly from classmates (like most young kids in the S.F.-Oakland area would).
The collection consisted of (126) Zeenut cards from 1929 to 1932.
What makes the collection especially rare is the fact that the cards are not found in the typical condition that one finds Zeenut cards, they still retain the ever-elusive COUPON at the base of the cards. As many that collect these cards know only perhaps 0.1 to 1% of Zeenut cards found today retain the coupon as the company offered many pretty great items that could be exchanged for the coupons and the you children would normally rip them off as soon as they had them in hand as they were sometimes able to trade the coupons themselves for a card they didn’t have from the non-baseball card collectors, or as they were known in the Bay area as “KEWP COLLECTORS.” These people had no use for the ballplayers but were instead saving up for some item in the catalog that could be had for the coupons alone. Here is a photocopy of the 1938 prizes that could be had for the “Kewps." (You could get some pretty cool stuff for the coupons)
I made a video on my YouTube channel “Stars Of The Diamond” of me going through the cards as they arrived to me and then after I had sorted them out. It isn’t too long a of a video but I thought it would be fun to show them in situ before they are broke down and added to the collection Please check out the video, it is one of the more exciting collections I have been able to purchase in the past several years.
It includes (2) different Ernie Lombardi cards, a Prince Oana, Harry Rosenberg, and MANY more. I would love some feedback on the video and would love to hear your thoughts as well, also check out the other videos I have on my channel (feel free to SUBSCRIBE to the channel as well as I try to do a few videos a week and if the response picks up possibly even more)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91g3pgK7d_Q
Here are a few more images of the cards, these are the kinds of things that make this hobby so much FUN!!!
