Buck Barker writing on card backs

[brianp-beme]

Thought I would share a couple of neat Buck Barker cards.



The one on the right is a 1931 McDonald of Portland with what appears to be a caricature of Jimmy Cagney transferred onto the backside. This didn't deter Buck from writing all of Henry "Hank" McDonalds baseball vital info along each edge of the card.

The one on the left is a great example of the importance of Buck Barker's work on identifying players pictured on less mainstream sets such as the Zeenut issues. The card is a 1925 Zeenut of Haughy of San Francisco. Buck did a lot of research at the Sporting News headquarters in Missouri, and as far as I can tell brought along his cards as 'notepads'. On this card he obviously had difficulty finding any player matches to Haughy. At the top he writes a note to himself 'Try Hughes' and then probably added 'Not at SN' (Sporting News). Then he also notes that he 'Can't find SN as' and lists 'Haugh, Hough, Haughey, Haughee, Hughey, Hughie, Hugheey, Hughie, Hugh.' You can see the extent of research he did to try to identify this player...and you can imagine the countless hours pouring over documents and microfiche just to provide such information about a slew of elusive and obscure players pictured on Zeenuts and Old Judges, etc., all just for the general good of the collecting community. It is quite telling that the identity of player pictured on the 1925 Haughy Zeenut has still not been identified (at least as of five years ago when I last looked).

So no, I will never erase these chicken scratches, and I hope others haven't and will not.

Brian