Homemade Vintage Cards - Intersting Obits

[BaseballWeirdo]

Of the 500+ cards in the set, 14 indicated the player's death on the back, and of those, these four stood out. This set has been an immersion course in baseball history. I've learned so much in the last week from the ~50 odd player cards I've researched so far. This is going to be a year-long personal project.

Please share any stories, history, factoids, links so I can learn more about these players !!



Bill Donovan
William "Wild Bill" Edward Donovan
“Killed in train wreck Dec 1922”
Lengthy bio on SABR

Ray Chapman
Raymond Johnson Chapman
“Killed by a pitched ball in the summer of 1920. Ball pitched by Carl May of the New York Club”
Great biographical article in the NY Times, another in SABR

Walt Lerian
Walter "Peck" Irvin Lerian
“Killed by accident after the season of 1929”
Bio on SABR

Tony Boeckel
Norman Doxie Boeckel
“Killed in automobile accident in February 1924”
The first active major leaguer to die in an automobile accident
Baseball Reference Bio, NY Times Obit

[DaveW]

Those are so cool. Maybe I missed it earlier, but could you share with us the story of how you found these cards?

[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

Originally Posted by DaveW

Those are so cool. Maybe I missed it earlier, but could you share with us the story of how you found these cards?

I am interested to hear this story too!

[Runscott]

Sounds very interesting. You mentioned scanning some of them, but I have been unable to locate any of the scans. Could you please point us to them? Thanks.

[BaseballWeirdo]

Lets see if I did this correctly -- here is the link to a DropBox folder with the card scans.

[teetwoohsix]

Hi Paula-

Welcome to the board !!

These cards are very interesting. It sounds like a great research project. I have the same question as the others~ where did these come from? I'd love to hear the story of the find of these homemade cards. Please tell us

Sincerely, Clayton