For anyone who's interested, I just uploaded a gallery of my J.D. McCarthy postcards, along with an intro detailing my attempts to date the cards using the various reverse styles found on McCarthy postcards over the years.
I'm copying the intro below, and here's the link to the gallery. (Scroll down past the text to see the actual cards):
https://imageevent.com/willallison/mccarthy
I'm always looking to buy or trade for McCarthy postcards. Thanks for any input! Will Allison
AN INTRODUCTION TO J. D. MCCARTHY BASEBALL POSTCARDS
J. D. McCarthy was a prolific photographer based in the northern suburbs of Detroit, first in Royal Oak and then in Oak Park. In addition to photographing baseball players for Topps, McCarthy produced photos and postcards of athletes in multiple sports including baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and horse racing.
McCarthy is best known for his baseball postcards, which he produced from roughly 1950 to 1980, and which were commissioned by the ballplayers themselves to be used in filling autograph and fan-mail requests. (Yes, once upon a time, players cared enough about their fans to personally foot the bill for these postcards, which they then gave away for free, often autographed.) McCarthy also sold his postcards directly to collectors. The unnumbered, undated cards sometimes included facsimile autographs or ad copy promoting a player’s business interests, such as Nellie Fox Bowl, Don Drysdale’s Dugout restaurant, and Gaylord Perry’s Balestra Pontiac dealership.
In addition to photgraphing most stars of the day, McCarthy photographed many players who never made the big leagues. According to Bob Lemke, former editor of Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, “...McCarthy had hundreds of photos of players in major league uniforms that never actually played in the bigs. Many of his photos were shot at spring training when prospects were up with the big club before being returned to the minors or hanging up their spikes.” As a result, his postcards comprise many obscure players.
McCarthy reportedly liked to approach his prospective customers (i.e., players) during their very first appearance in spring training, so his postcards also comprise a number of rookie cards, including Sparky Anderson, Luis Aparicio, Jim Bunning, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente, Don Drysdale, Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Jim Kaat, Al Kaline, Roger Maris, Minnie Minoso, Thurman Munson, Ron Santo, Willie Stargell, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Billy Williams, and many others.
McCarthy also had many repeat customers, producing multiple poses of some players throughout their careers. For instance, he issued no fewer than eight poses of Don Drysdale, seven poses of Mickey Mantle (including group shots with Stan Musial and Roger Maris), six poses of Ron Santo, five poses of Willie Mays, four poses of Billy Williams, three poses of Ted Williams, and so on. Many poses can be found with multiple reverse styles, indicating separate orders placed over the years.
DATING MCCARTHY POSTCARDS
Dating McCarthy postcards can be tricky, unless there’s a legible postmark, but even a postmark doesn’t necessarily establish the year of issue, as some players answered fan mail with postcards they ordered years earlier. In most cases, though, a date (or date range) can usually be determined by cross-referencing variables such as the postmark (if there is one), the player’s tenure with a given team, and the uniform style. (“Dressed to the Nines,” a baseball uniform database, is available on the Baseball Hall of Fame’s website. See link below.)
After collecting McCarthy postcards for a few years, I began to wonder if the cards could also be dated by using the reverse style. After studying hundreds of McCarthy postcards, I assembled a taxonomy of thirteen different reverse styles (see gallery) used by McCarthy over the years. By comparing scores of postmarked examples, I was able to determine a date range for each style. This taxonomy is an ongoing project, subject to revision based on newly discovered postmarked examples.
Postcards featuring the Type 12 reverse are the most difficult to date for a couple of reasons. First, McCarthy used this style longer than any other, from approximately 1966 to 1980, about fifteen years.* (No other reverse style was used for more than six years.) Second, by the early 1970s, more players were mailing their postcards inside envelopes, so the cards themselves bear no postmarks. The latest Type 12 postmarked examples I’ve seen are from 1972 (not counting a Willie Stargell card postmarked in Cooperstown on his HOF induction day in 1988).
MY COLLECTION
I began collecting McCarthy baseball postcards around 2010, focusing mainly on Hall of Famers, stars, and semistars. According to Bob Lemke, McCarthy created images of more than a thousand baseball players. In the 1980s, a collector named Rich Suen attempted to create a checklist, though I’ve never seen the checklist or sought it out, as one thing I enjoy about collecting McCarthy PCs is discovering cards that I didn’t know existed.
I also enjoy the challenge. Though there are usually hundreds of McCarthy postcards for sale on eBay at any given time, the majority of them are quite rare, especially compared to their readily available Topps and Bowman counterparts. There are some poses that I’ve seen only once or twice since 2010. Furthermore, the number of McCarthy cards on eBay speaks more to the number of different cards he produced than to the scarcity of individual cards.
I also appreciate the affordability of McCarthy postcards. Some cards sell for hundreds (in 2021, a 1955 Roberto Clemente fetched $460 on eBay), but sales rarely exceed $100, and most can be had for $10 to $50.
So why are McCarthy postcards not more popular and expensive? I think there are two primary reasons. First, collectors tend to prefer cards that have been checklisted, and the only extant McCarthy checklist is not readily available.
Second, collectors increasingly prefer cards that can be submitted to a third-party grader, but as of this writing, PSA will not grade McCarthy postcards—perhaps because it has long been rumored that after the photographer’s death in the 1980s, his negatives were used to produce reprints.
A WORD ON REPRINTS
Even if the reprint rumor is true, a survey of cards available on the marketplace strongly suggests that the vast majority of McCarthy postcards were never reprinted. The cards are almost never offered in bulk (a recent lot of one hundred Bucky Dent cards being a rare exception), and many of the most desirable players and poses—the ones that would actually be worth reprinting—are too scarce to have been reprinted.
In the end, it just wouldn’t have made sense to go to the trouble of reprinting cards that traditionally did not fetch much of a premium.
In more than ten years of collecting McCarthy postcards, I have encountered reprints exactly once. They were printed on flimsy, non-glossy stock with a different type of ink than McCarthy used. In short, they were easy to spot as fakes—so easy that the seller, not a McCarthy collector, billed them as probable reprints when he offered them on eBay. I bought the seller’s whole inventory of fakes in order to take them off the market.**
*Type 12 was the first and only reverse type to include a zip code. Initially, I assumed Type 12 cards dated from 1963, when zip codes were first introduced in the U.S. However, the earliest postmarked example I’ve seen is from 1966. It’s possible that McCarthy and his printer were exhausting their supply of Type 8, 9, and 10 reverses before switching to Type 12.
**The small hoard comprised between five and ninety copies each of one basketball player (Rick Barry) and ten baseball players: Luis Aparicio (two poses), Whitey Ford, Ralph Kiner, Harvey Kuenn, Fred Lasher, Willie McCovey, Minnie Minoso, Duke Snider, Hoyt Wilhelm, and Early Wynn. All of the reprints featured the Type 10 reverse, which was used by McCarthy from 1963-1965, but as far as I know, he never produced any of these particular poses with a Type 10 reverse except for Duke Snider, whose reprint features a transposed reverse. For purposes of comparison, I have included the reprints (except for Rick Barry and Fred Lasher) in my gallery.