Goodwin Goldfaden, Hobby Pioneer

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by vrechek

I just learned from Goodie Goldfaden's great nephew that Goodie passed away Sunday night January 1, 2012, after battling illness for several weeks. The funeral is on Wednesday in the LA area. I haven't seen the obituary yet which should be in the LA Times. To the best of my knowledge, Goodie is survived by his wife Frieda, of Sherman Oaks.

Goodie was born in Cleveland on the same date as Joe DiMaggio (11/24/14) and started selling sports publications in 1925! I met Goodie a few years ago and wrote about him in Sports Collectors Digest. Goodie opened a store for sports publications in LA, considered himself the first dealer in strictly sports collectibles, sold baseball cards as well, attended the first card and memorabilia conventions, sold a half-million sports publications to Notre Dame University, and then started over again accumulating tons of publications. He sold his entire inventory more times than he could remember - and Goodie had a very good memory. He was still advertising to buy sports publications within the past few years, and still very sharp, driving through LA traffic to get things out of his warehouse. I was fortunate to have met Goodie and thank Jim McConnell for introducing me. Before I met Goodie I talked to Bill Mastro about him, who described him as a little bulldog. I would add that he was a very likeable bulldog. Thinking of Goodie brings a smile to my face today.

Please share any thoughts you may have about Goodwin Goldfaden. I will be doing a story for Sports Collectors Digest.

Hi,
Thanks for posting this and I look forward to reading your upcoming article. I did read your earlier article on early pioneer Goodie Goldfaden.

I actually cut and pasted the above coments and sent them to my close friend and fellow baseball ticket collecter Dan Busby. I personally have been collecting baseball tickets since 1972, but Dan precedes me by many years. He is a true pioneer in this niche collectible hobby. He has amassed an unbelievable collection of Post Season baseball, Opening Day and archive of baseball tickets tracing all years of virtually every baseball team.

Since he is not on net54 he asked that I post these comments on his behalf:

Scott,

Please feel free to pass my comments along to the right person.


"Goodie believed in advertising so his ads were commonly in the early hobby papers. I connected with him in the late 50's. I was collecting baseball scorecards and programs at the time, he was the best source I could find. When I would buy World Series programs from him, the ticket from the game was often stapled to the front cover--Goodie hadn't even mentioned the ticket was coming. I guess tickets to the games didn't seem to have much value or Goodie would definitely have wanted some money for them. I knew of no baseball ticket collectors. Baseball cards were the only baseball memorabilia being actively collected.


As the World Series programs arrived, I would carefully remove the tickets from the programs and separately store each. Even though I reallly didn't collect tickets, I put them in a box and eventually had a reasonable accumulation of World Series tickets. Several years later, I decided to begin collecting All-Star Game and World Series tickets. But my ticket collecting days began with the ducats that Goodie sent me.


I only met Goodie one time--it was in the summer of 1966, I believe. I made an appointment to meet him at the store. It was the middle of the day on a weekday, but an appointment was important. Goodie only let one person in the store at a time and I was the customer of the morning. While he was all business, he was guininely kind. I enjoyed a relationship with Goodie for several decades. He provided a very positive service to collectors of sports memorabilia. The likes of Goodie will not come our way again."



Dan Busby