Theories About the Existence of High Grade Vintage

[mechanicalman]

Since re-entering the hobby a few years ago, the thing that has most blown my mind is the existence of extremely high grade vintage cards. I'm talking about T206s in 8 and 9s, Goudeys in 9, and even a '34 Goudey Gehrig in Gem MT 10 coming to auction from Heritage.

My question is - how do cards that, when launched, and were perceived to have nothing more than sentimental value, survive 80-100+ years through Wars, Depressions, moms, etc. in such amazing condition? I mean, hell, when I collected in 1985, my Topps pick-ups were probably in VG-EX condition by the time I got them home from the grocery store, and I cherished those cards as if they were cardboard gold.

I know I'm opening the doors to responses centered around trimming/altering and other nefarious activities, and I acknowledge that's a big driver. But I wonder if any experts know of any other, more virtuous, events that would have led to high grade material standing the tests of time. I'm aware of the Black Swamp find, the 52 Topps Mr. Mint find, but I wonder if there were other large finds that would have preserved cards. Any unopened Goudeys? Un-circulated T206s?

I don't collect super hi-grade vintage given my budget, but I'm just looking for a reason to believe in it. Thanks for your comments.

[Luke]

The main way that it has happened naturally is a near-mint card being placed in a scrapbook with a water/flour mixture (or something similar). The scrapbook protects the card for decades, and at some point it is soaked out and graded.

[kmac32]

After soaking a few vintage cards recently, it is pretty easy to do with little or no damage to the cards so I agree with Lukes theory. I also remember as a kid collecting 1969 topps and you would play with them for a day or 2 and then into my baseball card drawer they would go not to be seen for years and then one day when I was in college, mom was cleaning out drawers and asked if I still wanted them. They were still in pristine shape after 20 plus years in a drawer so I an sure many cards have survived decades in attics and basements.

[mybuddyinc]

Agree with what Luke and Ken said -- scrap books, shoe boxes, etc.

I think that, say cards that were produced in 1910, that are high grade today were high grade in 1915. Those were the ones NOT "played" with. The cards that are low grade today, again, were low grade by 1915. Those were the ones traded, shoved in pockets, went through the wash, etc., etc.

Although I mainly deal with lower to mid grade cards, I have handled a few higher grade ones. These cards are actually, imo, quite durable little pieces of card board. You would have to blatantly fold them in half to get a crease, or bang them very hard to mess up a corner. Conversely, once a "handled" card is wrinkled, a wrinkle can turn into a crease with more handling, as well as a corner ding turn into corner wear.

Well, that didn't add much.

[mechanicalman]

All great answers, guys, and very logical. I knew about scrapbooking, but I guess I thought (wrongly) that those mainly ended up as 1s and A's because of torn or glue-stained backs. But it makes sense that some of those were removed with no trace of the residue.

Thanks, jsq, for the history. Man that would have been fun to be a part of. Would make a great article or short story.

My faith is starting to be restored.

[sforaker]

Great topic. Fascinating and well articulated historical perspective, jsq, thank you. This perspective provides some heartening balanced perspective to the very legitimate concerns about trimming and altering.

[Jantz]

Originally Posted by mybuddyinc

Agree with what Luke and Ken said -- scrap books, shoe boxes, etc.

I think that, say cards that were produced in 1910, that are high grade today were high grade in 1915. Those were the ones NOT "played" with. The cards that are low grade today, again, were low grade by 1915. Those were the ones traded, shoved in pockets, went through the wash, etc., etc.

Although I mainly deal with lower to mid grade cards, I have handled a few higher grade ones. These cards are actually, imo, quite durable little pieces of card board. You would have to blatantly fold them in half to get a crease, or bang them very hard to mess up a corner. Conversely, once a "handled" card is wrinkled, a wrinkle can turn into a crease with more handling, as well as a corner ding turn into corner wear.

Well, that didn't add much.

I agree with the NOT "played" with theory.

Growing up in Ohio meant snow on the ground on Christmas day. So on Christmas I would open up my toys, maybe assemble them or put the decals on and place them back in their box for when Spring came and I could go outside and play with them or I would play with them inside the house and when Spring came, I was ready for something else like riding my bike or fishing. So my toys received little abuse, if any.

My Mother (Thanks Mom! ) kept all my childhood toys and sports cards.

So I decided that over this winter I would sell my childhood toys. I called my Mother and told her that I would be getting all my toys out of her attic and selling them. Some of the toys I brought home were 40 year old toys still in their original box.

Finding 80+ year old cards in near-mint condition doesn't sound crazy to me.


Jantz

[jsq]

to understand the answer to your question, some perspective below may help you.

i will just bang it out so please forgive grammer etc.

during the mid 1970's about 25 or 30 different groups of people travelled the country doing hotel buying trips. they took out ads in the local newspaper and said i am buying cards in your town, pre 1960 typically, come to xyz hotel on saturday and/or sunday and we will pay cash.

this was before any reasonable hobby card guide or price guide existed.

the hobby prior to this time period had experienced very slow but steady growth but still was extremely small relative to todays number of collectors. with the emergence of hobby papers such as trader speaks and sports collectors digest some information was finally emerging but pricing info was grudgingly shared, not until the beckett guides did good price info emerge to the masses.

as such many people with older cards did not place much value on them - even within the hobby. and this was correctly so at that time as the market was extremely thin. you could not move volume of quality older cards. there was very little cash in the hobby in 1974 and 1975.

in 1974 or 1975, i remember having fits moving a vg-ex set of 1941 play ball that i wanted $225 or $250 for and that was after a 2 day show in chicago (once a year show or twice a year - i don't recall when chicago area finally got 2 shows a year for its 7 million metro region). this was the only shows held in that metro of any consequence for the entire year at that time. other metros likewise had only 1 or two shows a year in 1974. finally a guy showed up near the end or after the show closed and said he would buy it and complained massively that his wife was going to chew his A** for spending so much at the show.

the volume of cards and the quality of cards that was acquired by these different buying hotel buying groups was truly of epic proportion. something few who were not part the buying groups could ever imagine. this is truly the catalyst of the hobby growth for many reasons including:

it finally gave sellers enough inventory for people to put more effort into the marketing of the hobby (and their now burgeoning inventory).

the local newspapers found this such an exotic idea that adults would purchase essentially kids toys and pay good cash to boot that it was a great story that ran in many papers. this in turn brought hundreds of thousands of collectors into the hobby with the knowledge that it was ok to collect childhood memories even if you were not a child. the newspapers often made fun of the collectors. it was quite difficult to collect cards as an adult, you were literally looked at as a bit "odd" and that is no exageration at the point in time. local media exposure covering these buying trips greatly increased the awareness of the hobby.

i could go on with lots of other catalysts this buying activity unleashed but let it be safe to say many of the pre 1960 cards in the hobby emanated from these hotel buying trips. they covered literally every state, canada, and venezuela. they provided the inventory for the majority of the original card stores.

one of my friends, mike, competed with me in these hotel buying trip ventures (he also lived in a town of 75,000 people and ran a weekly classified to buy cards in the local paper. for instance mike had about 50 mint (nm to mint ie psa 8,9,10 by todays grading) 1959 stan musials for instance because he kept the ones from his and his partners buying trips. stan was his childhood hero. think how many lesser grade musials were in the batches he handled. these 50 cards on these buying trips and classified ads (most came from the buying trips) came from the original owner or original owners families. the condition was all over the place as you can imagine but mike and this 1 hotel buying group did enough volume of purchases for mike to get about 50 nm-mt 59 musials. he had dibs on the musials but nonetheless this one guy from one buying group had this many at one time by 1976 or 1977. now extrapolate this back in time. the older stuff had lower volume available of couse but e, t, and r series cards from 1910 - 1941 were a lot more common showing up at these hotel buying trips then todays collectors would imagine. and the condition in some cases was factory new for all intents and purposes. the older the lesser condition in general of course.

one thing to understand is that virtually nobody cared about condition as we know it today. my friend mike was far and away the first person i ever met who cared about gloss, printer marks, and centering. everyone wanted nice clean cards and would always take the better centered better condition. condition was not a major concern. the key then was to fill the missing number and most never bothered to upgrade and since i personally knew numerous people with collections that would have been in the top 20 collections EVER assembled before big money moved into the hobby in the 1990's i know what was in those collections and handled their cards personally -literally handled. with my friend mike that included mint sets of topps bowmans, play balls and goudeys (no lajoie) not to mention lots of e and t stuff that ranged from ex to mt but mike did not have complete sets of all the major e and t sets like he did the r sets.

beer can collecting was getting far more press at that time and had the added benefit that people did not think you were "weird" as an adult collecting beer cans since it was macho. the thing that stunted and essentially kept beer can collecting a small hobby is that unlike bb cards no giant hordes ever continually turned up. no hotel buying trips turned up anything if hotel buying trips even ever occured with beer cans. thus their was no incentive for the hobby to grow into the volume like it did with bb cards. no inventory = no business/hobby.

beer can collecting started later then bb card collecting yet it had 10 times the number of collectors by 1975? by 1975 beer can collecting had 6 or 7 major publishing books in full color whereas the bb card hobby had sortof 1. the beer can collecting hobby dwarfed the bb card hobby in terms of adult participants.

it is a good perspective to understand why the beer can collecting hobby died in infancy and why the bb card hobby skyrocketed. understand the hotel buying trips and what it unleashed and you will know a lot about the bb card hobby.

understanding the volume and QUALITY of cards turned up AND SAVED for the future of the hobby by these pioneers in the bb card collecting field is a key to understanding the sudden growth of the hobby starting in 1976 and moving forward and likewise the volume of cards led to the emergence of the price guide which took the hobby to another level.

no hotel buying trips = no excess inventory,
no influx of inventory = far fewer cards for collectors to collect
no hotel buying trips = no emergence of price guides for mass consumption
no hotel buying trips = no mass media exposure
no hotel buying trips = a whole lot of todays cards would have ended up in the trash heap.
no hotel buying trips = well you are starting to grasp the importance of the hotel buying trips and the vision the early hobby pioneers had which provided the catalyst for the emergence of this fun hobby.

you can make a good case that the catalyst for the entire bb card hobby was the hotel buying trips. without the hotel buying trips very few of the collectors of today would be in this hobby.

do lots of cards exist today that are truly mint or nm condition that were never touched or tampered with by card doctors? the answer is definately yes - i saw them and handled them in the 1973 - 1978 era.

their were a surprising number of kids who took care of their cards and just assembled number runs, or sets, if they had enough cash and then put the cards in a box where they sat for 15, 30, and many more years. i saw stuff walk in the door that would knock your sox off.

also if you hung out with the biggest of the big collectors of the 1974 era many would tell you not to touch anything after 1965 because they made to much of it and their would never be enough collectors to ever buy the stuff from the 65 and more recent period. the hobby growth just was not existing and some card sellers in the back of sporting news and bb card digest were pumping out sets every year to fill all the demand so who would their be to sell the 1965 and more recent cards to in the future? this was VERY logical based on their experience with the GLACIAL growth of the hobby in the 1950's and 60's. few entered the hobby because they did not know how to contact each other and due to social stigma. you did not brag about collecting to your co-worker, beer drinking buddies, team members, or fellow church members as they would think you quite weird. you could not move volume of older cards for cash, their was so little cash in the hobby. you could trade but before the hotel buying trips few people had much in the way of duplicates to trade. as such the hobby was kinda stuck before the hordes of cards were unleashed by the hotel buying trips.

i sold all of my cards by 1978 or so and life worked out quite well. it was a springboard in many ways, a heck of a LOT of fun, and a real education in economics, marketing, and business which all served me extremely well in the future.

hope this helps round out some perspective regarding your question:

do cards of today exist which were never tampered with?
the answer is unequivocally YES, lots of mt condition cards were saved from the scrap heap due to the hotel buying groups rescuing them in 1975 and 1976.

life is very good,

jsq

[whitehse]

Originally Posted by jsq

to understand the answer to your question, some perspective below may help you.

i will just bang it out so please forgive grammer etc.

during the mid 1970's about 25 or 30 different groups of people travelled the country doing hotel buying trips. they took out ads in the local newspaper and said i am buying cards in your town, pre 1960 typically, come to xyz hotel on saturday and/or sunday and we will pay cash.

this was before any reasonable hobby card guide or price guide existed.

the hobby prior to this time period had experienced very slow but steady growth but still was extremely small relative to todays number of collectors. with the emergence of hobby papers such as trader speaks and sports collectors digest some information was finally emerging but pricing info was grudgingly shared, not until the beckett guides did good price info emerge to the masses.

as such many people with older cards did not place much value on them - even within the hobby. and this was correctly so at that time as the market was extremely thin. you could not move volume of quality older cards. there was very little cash in the hobby in 1974 and 1975.

in 1974 or 1975, i remember having fits moving a vg-ex set of 1941 play ball that i wanted $225 or $250 for and that was after a 2 day show in chicago (once a year show or twice a year - i don't recall when chicago area finally got 2 shows a year for its 7 million metro region). this was the only shows held in that metro of any consequence for the entire year at that time. other metros likewise had only 1 or two shows a year in 1974. finally a guy showed up near the end or after the show closed and said he would buy it and complained massively that his wife was going to chew his A** for spending so much at the show.

the volume of cards and the quality of cards that was acquired by these different buying hotel buying groups was truly of epic proportion. something few who were not part the buying groups could ever imagine. this is truly the catalyst of the hobby growth for many reasons including:

it finally gave sellers enough inventory for people to put more effort into the marketing of the hobby (and their now burgeoning inventory).

the local newspapers found this such an exotic idea that adults would purchase essentially kids toys and pay good cash to boot that it was a great story that ran in many papers. this in turn brought hundreds of thousands of collectors into the hobby with the knowledge that it was ok to collect childhood memories even if you were not a child. the newspapers often made fun of the collectors. it was quite difficult to collect cards as an adult, you were literally looked at as a bit "odd" and that is no exageration at the point in time. local media exposure covering these buying trips greatly increased the awareness of the hobby.

i could go on with lots of other catalysts this buying activity unleashed but let it be safe to say many of the pre 1960 cards in the hobby emanated from these hotel buying trips. they covered literally every state, canada, and venezuela. they provided the inventory for the majority of the original card stores.

one of my friends, mike, competed with me in these hotel buying trip ventures (he also lived in a town of 75,000 people and ran a weekly classified to buy cards in the local paper. for instance mike had about 50 mint (nm to mint ie psa 8,9,10 by todays grading) 1959 stan musials for instance because he kept the ones from his and his partners buying trips. stan was his childhood hero. think how many lesser grade musials were in the batches he handled. these 50 cards on these buying trips and classified ads (most came from the buying trips) came from the original owner or original owners families. the condition was all over the place as you can imagine but mike and this 1 hotel buying group did enough volume of purchases for mike to get about 50 nm-mt 59 musials. he had dibs on the musials but nonetheless this one guy from one buying group had this many at one time by 1976 or 1977. now extrapolate this back in time. the older stuff had lower volume available of couse but e, t, and r series cards from 1910 - 1941 were a lot more common showing up at these hotel buying trips then todays collectors would imagine. and the condition in some cases was factory new for all intents and purposes. the older the lesser condition in general of course.

one thing to understand is that virtually nobody cared about condition as we know it today. my friend mike was far and away the first person i ever met who cared about gloss, printer marks, and centering. everyone wanted nice clean cards and would always take the better centered better condition. condition was not a major concern. the key then was to fill the missing number and most never bothered to upgrade and since i personally knew numerous people with collections that would have been in the top 20 collections EVER assembled before big money moved into the hobby in the 1990's i know what was in those collections and handled their cards personally -literally handled. with my friend mike that included mint sets of topps bowmans, play balls and goudeys (no lajoie) not to mention lots of e and t stuff that ranged from ex to mt but mike did not have complete sets of all the major e and t sets like he did the r sets.

beer can collecting was getting far more press at that time and had the added benefit that people did not think you were "weird" as an adult collecting beer cans since it was macho. the thing that stunted and essentially kept beer can collecting a small hobby is that unlike bb cards no giant hordes ever continually turned up. no hotel buying trips turned up anything if hotel buying trips even ever occured with beer cans. thus their was no incentive for the hobby to grow into the volume like it did with bb cards. no inventory = no business/hobby.

beer can collecting started later then bb card collecting yet it had 10 times the number of collectors by 1975? by 1975 beer can collecting had 6 or 7 major publishing books in full color whereas the bb card hobby had sortof 1. the beer can collecting hobby dwarfed the bb card hobby in terms of adult participants.

it is a good perspective to understand why the beer can collecting hobby died in infancy and why the bb card hobby skyrocketed. understand the hotel buying trips and what it unleashed and you will know a lot about the bb card hobby.

understanding the volume and QUALITY of cards turned up AND SAVED for the future of the hobby by these pioneers in the bb card collecting field is a key to understanding the sudden growth of the hobby starting in 1976 and moving forward and likewise the volume of cards led to the emergence of the price guide which took the hobby to another level.

no hotel buying trips = no excess inventory,
no influx of inventory = far fewer cards for collectors to collect
no hotel buying trips = no emergence of price guides for mass consumption
no hotel buying trips = no mass media exposure
no hotel buying trips = a whole lot of todays cards would have ended up in the trash heap.
no hotel buying trips = well you are starting to grasp the importance of the hotel buying trips and the vision the early hobby pioneers had which provided the catalyst for the emergence of this fun hobby.

you can make a good case that the catalyst for the entire bb card hobby was the hotel buying trips. without the hotel buying trips very few of the collectors of today would be in this hobby.

do lots of cards exist today that are truly mint or nm condition that were never touched or tampered with by card doctors? the answer is definately yes - i saw them and handled them in the 1973 - 1978 era.

their were a surprising number of kids who took care of their cards and just assembled number runs, or sets, if they had enough cash and then put the cards in a box where they sat for 15, 30, and many more years. i saw stuff walk in the door that would knock your sox off.

also if you hung out with the biggest of the big collectors of the 1974 era many would tell you not to touch anything after 1965 because they made to much of it and their would never be enough collectors to ever buy the stuff from the 65 and more recent period. the hobby growth just was not existing and some card sellers in the back of sporting news and bb card digest were pumping out sets every year to fill all the demand so who would their be to sell the 1965 and more recent cards to in the future? this was VERY logical based on their experience with the GLACIAL growth of the hobby in the 1950's and 60's. few entered the hobby because they did not know how to contact each other and due to social stigma. you did not brag about collecting to your co-worker, beer drinking buddies, team members, or fellow church members as they would think you quite weird. you could not move volume of older cards for cash, their was so little cash in the hobby. you could trade but before the hotel buying trips few people had much in the way of duplicates to trade. as such the hobby was kinda stuck before the hordes of cards were unleashed by the hotel buying trips.

i sold all of my cards by 1978 or so and life worked out quite well. it was a springboard in many ways, a heck of a LOT of fun, and a real education in economics, marketing, and business which all served me extremely well in the future.

hope this helps round out some perspective regarding your question:

do cards of today exist which were never tampered with?
the answer is unequivocally YES, lots of mt condition cards were saved from the scrap heap due to the hotel buying groups rescuing them in 1975 and 1976.

life is very good,

jsq

I have to agree with what was said here.

I was at those Chicagoland shows in the mid to late 70's and could not believe there was a whole room full of people selling cards that a ten year old like me had never seen. Those were indeed magical times to a young kid who was more worried about completing his own "modern" sets such as the '75 or '76 Topps cards to worry about Play Balls or T cards. It was incredible to see all of the diversity those shows brought but my sets were where I concentrated on.

Fast forward a few years and I went on to convince my dad and an older collector to have a card show in our garage. Now my parents house was in a very rural area, 50 miles north of Chicago but the thought was that a few well placed want ads and signs on the highway would draw people in. Thos eearly card shows were an incredible success in that when people saw we were paying cash for their cards they were lined up out the door waiting to sell. Cards in paper grocery bags, cigar boxes and even Velveeta cheese boxes came to us and we bought every one. I remember after our first show I walked away with a full 1955 Topps set with a Koufax, Snider and a number of other stars left over. Conditions varied but for the most part these cards were ex or ex+

We did have the opportunity to purchase one man's childhood collection that consisted of 1960to 1966 full Topps sets, all stored in Velveeta cheese boxes. This man took meticulous care of his cards and without a doubt most, if not all the cards were in mint condition. We paid a huge sum of money for this set back in 1980 (500 bucks) with me selling off most of my collection before grading came into the hobby. I still remember selling my collection to Kit Young at one of the Chicago Nationals and he did not bat an eye giving me my asking price. I remember like it was yesterday, hearing him tell me that I knew how to grade cards and priced my sets accordingly.

I remember another elderly gentleman that walked in with a box of cards that he wanted an idea as to what they were worth. I opened the box and saw that there had to be 400+ 1933 Goudey cards all in at least VG to ex+ condition. I took him to a separate room and we sat there and put a near set of these cards together. As we were sorting I explained about the Nap Lajoie card and how very difficult and valuable it was and he stopped sorting, looked at me and said..."you mean like this one?" In his hand he was holding a beautiful Lajoie that, to me would easily grade a six or seven. I tried to purchase the lot from him but he said it was going back in the safe deposit box for his grandchildren to determine what to do with them.

I have no doubt that these pristine examples of cards are still in collectors hands and in collections stored away in attics from days gone by. There are still many cards and other pieces of memorabilia squirreled away that have yet to come to the light of the hobby