Buck Barker writing on card backs

[barrysloate]

Thanks Mark, very interesting.

[oaks1912]

Rich..... I knew Dave Houser pretty well. He was an 'original' Zeenut collector back in the 30's. In the early 70's, he found his collection and contacted advanced collector Jim Horne with the original intent of selling the collection to Jim. As he & Jim talked about the collection, Dave's interest in the hobby was rekindled. He was not a person of financial means, but was genuinely interested in the players and the collectibles. In the late 70's Dave published "Sports West", which was a small, short-lived hobby publication, mostly targeting West Coast collectors and collectibles.. Dave loved to research and shared much of his knowledge through various articles. The subscription rates were the most unique scale I'd ever seen. You could send cash, or an adequate quantity of vintage baseball cards to cover your subscription. Beginning around 1977, Dave started to carpool with me to quite a few of our local Northern California shows, as he had no transportation and he lived in nearby San Leandro. He dropped out of circulation in the late 80's, and is now deceased. At the recent San Leandro show last month, a collage was made showing some of the faces from the show's 25 year history. I included a picture of Dave with our friend Lou Chericoni as a tribute to both of them...... Paul...I'm sorry I did not address your question earlier. I do recall a few of the Barker Zeenuts had multiple sources indicated on the back & I do not have a definitive answer. Your suggestion that the card was acquired from one collector, later traded, still later reacquired from another collector is plausible

[paul]

Thanks Mark.

[Rich Klein]

Or ever heard of it. If anyone has a copy they could located and scan I'd love to see ONE copy

Rich

[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

[Spike]

I picked up some cards at the National with hand-written player updates on the back and an advanced collector told me to look up Buck Barker's own updates, such as cards in this thread. He also called out the T207 Irv Lewis, which I've failed to find so far. Anyone know why that one in particular? Did Buck write something NSFW on it?

[Yoda]

I hold and have owned before a Pinkertons Cobb - fielding with Buck's printed name and address on it.

[RCMcKenzie]

Originally Posted by Spike

I picked up some cards at the National with hand-written player updates on the back and an advanced collector told me to look up Buck Barker's own updates, such as cards in this thread. He also called out the T207 Irv Lewis, which I've failed to find so far. Anyone know why that one in particular? Did Buck write something NSFW on it?

My recollection is that I bought the Lewis on here. It was billed as prior Barker and Olbermann. I think I sold it with B&L around 2010. I see the listing, but no photo in their archives. It may be on here in a thread somewhere. It had red ink writing all over the back in a circle. Just bio and stat content.