Niche set collecting

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

One of the niche sets which I most enjoy collecting are common players who for a fleeting moment achieved a level of “greatness” unusual in their careers. Generally the players and their achievements go unnoticed. And generally these “achievements” are not really very noteworthy.

But my enjoyment comes in part from the baseball research and the subsequent discovery and insight into these players. An additional attractive feature is that their cards are often inexpensive.

It makes for a fun collecting subset, even if not a particularly valuable one. A few of these players and their claim to fame are described below.

Pat Seerey, a lifetime .224 hitter who always swung for the seats, and struck out >25% of his ABs; put it all together on 7/18/48 hitting four HRs in a game. He was then the fifth man to accomplish that feat. Six days later he became the only man to strike out seven times in a double header.

Johnnie Burnett in July, 1932 set the single game record for hits with nine (well it was an 18 inning game – but still: 9 hits). In the 1920 Cadore/Oeschger 26 inning marathon, Charlie Pick sets the opposite record: 0-11 as a hitter.

The trivia one can focus on as “important” is endless here, as are the cards which you can assemble in this endless trivial collection of “achievements”.

Similarly, just making it to the big leagues is an achievement, of sorts. Im sure everyone who joins the Show feels it. A collection of the cards of players who did make it on to a team’s roster, but never actually got to play makes for an interesting research project which results in cards from a variety of pre-war sets, but many post war examples. Some of these post war cards do have a level of interest. Eddie Gaedel, Herb Washington (who got into >100 games, but only as a pinch runner), are examples of some of the more recent examples who present some interest.

What "special interest" sets do you collect?

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Posted By: Steve M.

I have an Old Judge proof of a player named Boyce affiliated with the Washington team. He has four Old Judge cards yet it appears as though he never actually played during a regular season. Bob Lemke tells me that he did play some pre-season games with Washington but never made it to the Bigs. This will be one of my niche collections, along with Deacon McGuire, Harl Maggert and Marty Sullivan. I will be looking to get all four of the Old Judge cards.

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Posted By: Rob NYC

Bill Bergen for me. He has HOF stats for fielding, but he was probably the worst batter of all time. I love his T206 issue (batting) and am trying to collect all different backs.

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Posted By: Chad

But I'd like to collect the Federal League players from the Crackerjack set. I always thought collecting a card from as many different teams as possible would be cool as well.

--Chad

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Posted By: Geno

In the same mold as Bill Bergen is the White Sox catcher of the era, Billy Sullivan. He has the 2nd worst BA of all time, but was the first guy to catch 1000 games. Both of these backstops are featured in my T202 set, although Sullivan is only on a center panel.

Cheers,
Geno

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Posted By: Brian McQueen

Gil,

Nice idea for a thread...

There are a lot of sets out there that are of interest to collectors, yet many don't want to spend the time and money to collect an entire issue. So they break it off into a smaller niche set or "subset" so that they'll have something more reasonable to aim for while still being able to enjoy the set as a whole.

I've done this in several cases. Basically when a set appeals to me, but there's either too many cards in the set to go after (I'm not all that patient of an individual to be honest) or the cards are just too expensive that I can't go after more than just a few. Here's a few examples of Niche sets I've gone after in the past....

Old Judge/t206 - Kansas City players
e107 Type 2s
m116s with bluebackgrounds (24 total)
t205 minor leaguers (unique appearence from the regular cards...12 total)
t210 first series
t209 first series
t209-2 ....in this case, I went looking for ANY cards from the set and when I got a few, I took note of what team the player on the card was from and then attempted to finish off that particular team.

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Posted By: David Vargha

I have taken the general heading of "cards that I want" and have broken it down into the niche collection of "cards that I can justify to myself that I can afford".

DavidVargha@hotmail.com

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Posted By: Chris Bland

My niche is vintage cards where the player is wearing a suit - I think the humor of them is what appeals to me - here is one of Eddie Collins heading out for a night on the town - ladies beware!!!




Always on the lookout for my dream "suit" card - the Old Judge Ned Williamson/tuxedo pose

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Posted By: David McDonald

My niche is cards of players named McDonald. Anybody able to ID the Zeenuts? I think the '31 may be Hank McDonald. The 1912 appears to be a pitcher and neither Joe or Tex who played in that era were pitchers. Any ideas?