Hobby history: Card dealers of the 1950s

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by LeftHandedDane

David, I think its fantastic that you have retained (or acquired) the old collecting material, and the information that you are sharing is priceless to me. I didn't start collecting until the late 60's, and cannot wait to see your future posts on that decade. I wish I had kept the old catalogues and newsletters that I received back then.

Thanks for the kind words. I have retained hobby materials going back to the mid-70s, some of which I've posted here (such as this 1979 price list from mail-order dealer Paul Marchant: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=209650). But the items in this post are all from before I was born, and are among the many old hobby publications I've collected over the past 20+ years. I think most of the Gordon Taylor stuff originally belonged to Ray Medeiros, a longtime collector who meticulously saved all kinds of hobby publications starting in the late 40s (most of which I now have), and who is still around and semi-active in the hobby in his 80s. (Ray was also the original owner of the 1950s issues of Sport Fan from which I've posted many articles.) I'm not sure, but I think the Card Collectors' Company stuff I posted originally came from Irv Lerner. I got those price lists along with a bunch of hobby publications addressed to Lerner, and I know (from George Vrechek's interview with him in SCD) that Lerner started buying a lot of cards from Card Collectors' Company in 1959.