Condition Sensitive

[brian1961]

Originally Posted by raulus

I want to join in the fun, but don't really collect much pre-war.

So please don't hate me for sharing a postwar issue, but 1953-1954 Briggs Meats seems like it should qualify as condition sensitive, aside from the part about not qualifying by definition...

Of 239 cards ever graded by PSA, only 9 have ever graded above PSA 2, and only 8 at PSA 2 or 2.5...

Here's the highest graded piece in the entire set.

Well chosen, Nicolo. What compounds the problems for the 53/54 Briggs, the 54/55 Esskay, the 53 - 55 Hunter's, the 1962 JELL-O, and I'm certain all the cereal box cards et al is the fact that when they were issued, they were simple, cheap boy's / girl's trading cards that were "free" with a purchase of a food product. The major caveat was that the consumer had to cut the card off the product package. Sometimes you were given instructions; otherwise, you must figure it out for yourself. The crux of the caveat of the consumer cutting the card off the package was the likelihood it was a youngster. A kid's fine motor skills take years to mature, and what looked like a good cut to him might be "a cut below" to a PSA / SGC grader 50-75 years later.

Ponder it through, there was no warning to be extra careful how you cleaned the card, and especially how you cut the card off the product package. No company offering their "free trading cards" was going to do that, 'cause back in the day they were worthless, cheap toys for kids to collect. You simply begged your mother to buy that brand at the grocer.

However, one generation later, starting about 1969, the adult baseball card hobby slowly began to accelerate. The adult collectors all had their bubblegum cards complete. What they didn't have were most of the scarce to downright rare postwar regional / food issues. Many of them were gorgeous, and became highly desirable to the advanced collectors. You couldn't get these at Wholesale Cards Co., or The Trading Card Co., or Card Collectors Company. The latter had the tough to beastly Topps test issues, because it was operated by Woody Gelman and Richard Gelman, who both worked at Topps. The Topps test issues were the brainchild of Woody Gelman, so he naturally had an "in" to produce and procure them.

Not the immediate post-war regional / food. They were beautiful; however, they were frequently deadly scarce, and furthermore dreadfully rare. I like the late Mr. Mint Alan Rosen's separate definition of the two adjectives:

SCARCITY REFERS TO THE THE NUMBER OF CARDS PRINTED OF THE ISSUE, TYPICALLY VERY SMALL

RARITY REFERS TO HOW MANY OF THE VERY SMALL QUANTITY SURVIVED.

Let me give an example of both concepts:

1954 Red Heart Dog Food

One of the reasons why an early owner of Wholesale Cards Co. wanted to buy the company was that the owner had gotten a large quantity of the promotion leftover '54 Red Heart Dog Food Cards. As well as '53 - '55 Johnston Cookie Braves, Red Man Tobacco cards, 1961 Minnesota Twins hot dog regional, 1959 or 60 Bacon company Chicago Cardinals football team plastic-covered cards. Now, when the owner of Wholesale Cards got his large quantity of Red Hearts, he didn't get all of them. Oh no. The parent company, John Morrell, kept a huge portion of the leftovers for anyone who wrote to the company for a set of their '54 cards. They did this until the early 1970s, I read. That's why there's so many nice condition Red Hearts. Maybe not a lot of PSA 10s; that's ALWAYS a rare bird. At this point, a PSA 9 is fairly rare.

Now, as for the early post-war meat regionals, forget it. Extremely few UNUSED leftover cards and boxes made it into the hobby. There were three small finds of the dreadfully condition-sensitive and overall rare 53-55 Stahl-Meyer Franks baseball cards. In the mid-70s, a whopping 53 of the 1953 Whitey Lockman were sold to Rob Lifson for a hefty price. The family's dad had worked at Milprint, and scooped up a stack of the cards one day. They were all of Lockman. They were all essentially gem mint. I know, PSA has never graded a mint Lockman. Why? I don't know, but even in the 70s, it took a lot of careful effort to preserve a fragile card in eventual graded mint condition.

The second find occurred in the late 70s when a man came to a show who had worked at the famed Milprint Printing Co. in Wisconsin that produced all the tough meat issues. He wanted cash to buy Miller Brewing Co. stock. So, a noteworthy collector-dealer (read NEVER CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN; the great story is in there) handed over a chunk of cash for brand new, never in the package meat regional cards and boxes, including your mentioned 1953-54 Briggs Meats.

THAT is how that gorgeous Carl Erskine came to survive perfectly---and after a guessing game on how to cut it in a way PSA's upward turned nose and arrogant eyes would agree, it was rewarded with a Near Mint 7.

7? Why not Gem Mint 10? That little baby IS the proverbial needle in a haystack.

The third Stahl-Meyer Franks find occurred in the mid-1980s. It involved a very few uncut sheets. I read about it in SCD, which ran a tiny blurb about it. Those sheets were cut into cards, and sold right away. Stahl-Meyers are so hard to find that frustrated collectors bought 'em right up. That put the kaibosh on their future graded card value, but then, they were machine-cut with separating tabs, and there'd be no way to cut them as they were originally.

The "condition sensitivity" of the previously mentioned meat regionals presented itself immediately when they were packaged with or inside meat products. Being marinated in hot dog juice and goo did not help preserve the condition of the "free prize" cards. Take the opportunity to view Dave Berg's recent YOUTUBE video on Meat Regionals. It is well done and in 2 parts. His moniker is "bluejacket66".


To throw in some PRE-WAR crumbs, what happened to the issued cards and leftovers of such tantalizing pre-war regionals as 1914 Baltimore News and 1910 Washington Times can only be drawn from intelligent conjecture, a hated word for those who want only the FACTS.

Facts?

They're both over 100 years old. You think you're gonna find facts? Really? How naive and stupid can you get? Baseball cards in tobacco packs and candy packs were saved. Whatever came from a newspaper 99.9% of the time went to the purchasing adults, who threw away "such nonsense". There were things like SERIOUS paper drives in World War I. A few wound up in scrapbooks. The best Baltimore News Ruth I think came from a REA auction consigned by a family whose long-deceased relative had glued it in a scrapbook.

I've been verbose for too many paragraphs already. Maybe something I've said will be enlightening. Have a good evening.

---- Brian Powell