Famous "Finds"

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Posted By: Andrew Parks

I was discussing this with a board member a few nights ago and I wondered what the rest of you thought. This is a two-part question:

1) In regards to previously unknown or uncirculated baseball cards, in your opinion what would constitute a "find"?

2) What are some of the most well-known "finds" that you know of? (What did the find consist of? Is there an interesting anecdote that goes with the find?, etc...)

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Previously unknown/uncatalogued stuff pops up all the time on ebay and at shows. Those are "finds". I'd define a Find as uncovering a cache of desirable cards from a non-hobby source: a walk-in laydown at a show, a box of cards at a yard sale, etc.

There are degrees, of course. The most impressive Find I know of is Dave Levin's OJ Find of last year. 1200+ OJs including some rare and uncatalogued poses. I saw about 80% of the Find at a show and it just took my breath away, like looking at a million dollars, literally, laying on a table. Or the CJ Find at the last National from that walk-in; I think that fetched $800K?

I've had a few "Finds"--it is how my collection got jump-started--but none in quite a few years.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

For me, a "find" can only be described as being the first one to find something good on Ebay with a low "Buy It Now" price. That is about the extent of my luck, since I never get to actually attend any shows or yard sales.

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Posted By: barrysloate

That's actually an interesting question, as the term "find" covers a broad range of definitions. For me a find constitutes some artifact that has belonged to a family for many years and has never been offered on the marketplace. In vintage baseball, finds are most often cigar boxes filled with T205 and T206 that were discovered by a family while cleaning their attic. Sometimes a find brings new and undiscovered cards into the hobby, such as the large cache of Tango Eggs that surfaced for the first time many years ago. We each have our own definition of a find. Perhaps the sale I am most proud of was six Just So's I had the privilege to auction at one time in 1998. But I can't consider them my find because they were consigned to me by the collector who purchased them from the original family. Therefore, I feel he can take credit for the find, and I can't. On the other hand last year I was offered an N28 Allen & Ginter banner that had resided with the same family for 30 years and had never been on the market before. In the same sale I offered a T206 Plank that was being sold for the very first time. That to me is more in the spirit of a find. I'm sure others have their own definitions.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Adam- Dave Levin's find of Old Judges was certainly among the most significant ever, and I think you mean a lot more than 120. It was more like 1400, give or take.

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Posted By: leonl

A few years ago I bought a little over 750 cards that had been in a closet, in CA, for the last 50 years or so. They included the only known full Western Playground set, some T4's, T217's, and lot's of Zeenuts with coupons and regular Obaks. I "announced" it on the board so don't care to repeat it-for everyone's else's sake. When the grandson was describing to me what he had, over the phone, it took my breath away. I call it the "Trucker Boy" find because that is what the grandson does for a living......regards

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Posted By: Josh K.

I believe that there was a pretty significant find last of 1914 Cracker Jacks (I think the entire set) last year. All of the cards were graded by SGC and the majority of the HOFers received 96's with a Joe Jackson grading a 98.

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Posted By: barry arnold

Some of you know how my find really got me into vintage cards.
Back in 1982, a best friend of mine had a death in her family--
a very old and revered great,great aunt.
My friend said that i was to have anything I wanted from this old,
beautiful farmhouse in rural Georgia.
Believe it or not, the first thing I found was a large display of
stuffed parakeets. I thought to myself(eerily)--what's next.
Then in the chest of drawers I found some 25 or so perfect 205's,203's,
206's, and 210's. Admittedly, at the time, I didn't know what they
really were---i knew Mantle,Mays,Aaron,etc.(and those weren't there!)
So like a really bright grad. student, I picked those cards as my
inheritance. And like a really not so bright grad.student, I hustled
to put them in one of those albums with 'frames'.
Then I started doing research and loving them--even selling off anything
i had that was not 205,210,206,203.
Years later when i realized that i'd better get them out of those
albums, i was able to salvage them pretty well--losing the gold around
the 205's here and there (ouch!) and causing a crease here and there
(the pain!).
Still, the Mathewson, the Bender, the Tinker,etc. got me hooked and
probably explains why i have all my cards slabbed religiously.

a great question

all the best

Barry Arnold

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Posted By: tbob

I won't rehash all the details of it, but the so-called "Southern Find" of which I was a part allowed a great number of T213 type 2 and 3 Coupons to be released in to the hobby. Lately I have heard a number of rumors concerning "finds," including an E94 find which made my heart race, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of those finds were greatly exaggerated and had no truth to them.

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Posted By: Josh K.

My best "find" was discovering vintage card collecting after I started collecting again (about two years ago). It took about 6 mos to a year of collecting almost nothing but certified autograph cards of HOFers and rookies, yes, the shiney stuff, before I found my way to vintage cards. This board was partly responsible - I somehow stumbled upon it doing an internet search for bb cards. Initially, I had little interest in the various posts and had no idea what all the numbers (ie T206, N28, etc.) being discussed meant. Nevertheless, I kept reading and the more I did, the more interested I became. Now, I cant believe I wasted my money on some of the newer cards that I bought.

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

Hal you need to get out more often.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I'm sure everyone heard about the Mr. X find???

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Posted By: peter ullman

I'd hardly consider the mr x. collection a find?!?! It's more like a collection that was recently purchased. Just my 2 cents

Pete in st paul

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Posted By: tbob

I still can't figure out the attraction with those cards. I thought PSA was going to designate "Mr. X" collection on the labels but apparently they only did that to a few of the tough cards. I just know if I ended up buying one of those T206 commons or even HOFers and had it for a couple of years and then sold it, I would have forgotten that it once belonged to Michael Jackson or OJ and simply sold it. I think some of the cards are overgraded any way so you could pay a better price for a nicer card that wasn't owned by Don King.

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Posted By: leon

aw...what the heck: ...cut and pasted from the original thread:

I believe I have seen the last small group of inherited cards from the gentleman in Northern California. It was a very informative situation
in that I got to see a nice PCL collection untainted by modern collectors/dealers. It looks like almost all of the cards have been put into a scrapbook at one time as a majority exhibit strong corners and
back damage, though many backs were spared too....... It was neat to see how they were really collected and in what type of numbers, relative to each other. I believe the only cards I missed out on were all 159 of the Colgans, Red Borders, and Tin Tops (if any), and about 5-7 M101-1/2's....Nothing I could do...they just got sold.......The total for all of the cards I got was about 732'ish. I will probably only sell these through ebay or to a large auction house. I am keeping everything I have an interest in, as utmost and foremost, I am still a collector. Including what I had posted before the grand total breakout is/was (several cards have been sold already to happy board/ebay members):

D310 (12) w/weaver fr....overall gd-vg
D311 (61) all different pr-ex
E90-1 (18) w/Jackson (pr-sold), Joss..overall pr-fr
E90-2 (1) Wagner - nice SGC 20....2 moderate creases
E90-3 (2) common and pr-
E101 (9) w/Evers, Jennings pr-fr....major back damage..
E136 Zeenut '11 (113) w/Weaver in fr...others vg'ish
E136 Zeenut '12 (36) gd-vg+/ex
E136 HR Kisses (2) gd
E136 Zeenut '13 (6) all with coupon
E136 Zeenut '14 (23) 6 with coupon 17 without coupon
E137 Zeenut '15 (67) 24 with coupon w/McMullen 43 w/o coup.w/Risberg, Lefty Williams
E137 Zeenut '16 (1) with coupon
E224 Texas Tommy (5) w/Marsans, w/uncatalogued
E-Unc Big Eater (3) w/ horizontal ex, 1 in gd-vg, 1 pr
H-unc Western Playground (40) complete set vg+
T4 Obak- (2) still unidentified but not Weaver.
T206 Old Mill- (23) w/Cobb, Evers, Chance, Willis.pr-fr
T206 Sweet Caporal ?(1) Cobb 350-460 series...pr.
T212-1 Obak (47) nice mix of framed/frameless
T212-2 Obak (116) about 25 different slogans.. pr-ex-mt
T212-3 Obak (131) w/Weaver pr-nrmt/mt
T217 Mono (8) 3 that don't have back damage......pr-gd
T222 Fatima- (7) all common, 1 high number in fr, 2 cut in half, pr....

wish I could find more of these "finds"...but will just go back to
whittling away like I have been for the past several years......
regards all

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

The bad thing about internet chat boards is that my sarcasm doesn't always come through the way I hoped it would.

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Posted By: leon

The 3 ??? just didn't have the effect.....

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Posted By: D. W.

A good friend of mine, whom is an antiques dealer in Georgia, bought three old travel trunks from a gentlemen who was cleaning out an old barn. The trunks were full of the belongings of a young woman who died when she was in her early 20's. She died from Influenza in the 1918 plague and upon her death her family had all of her things boxed up and placed in the top of the barn for storage. The farm stayed in the same family until 1994 when my buddy bought the trunks at auction. Inside one of the trunks were over 500 T206 cards of HOF'ers, about 50 or so Southern Leaguers, and many commons as you would expect. There were no rare cards with the exception of a few backs, there were a couple Broadleaf 350's and one Uzit, but none of the "big" error cards. The heat and moisture had taken it's toll on a few of the cards, but they were all in pretty good shape overall. She had an obvious love for baseball, but that was only a small portion of what was in the trunks, my friend kept a lot of the personal things as to not disturb them (letters, etc), he said that it was actually creepy yet fascinating as well. 90 plus years and no one had been in the trunks.

I bought 300 of the cards from him 4 or 5 years ago and still have them and I treasure them as she obviously did and I keep that group seperate from all of the rest of my items.

Not a huge find, but was fantastic to bring her story back to life.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Next time I'll use the dreaded smiley face.

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Posted By: peter ullman

sorry Dan...I can dish out sarcasm, but I can't seem to recognize it!

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Posted By: DJ

I caught it Dan.

It blows my mind. The items that T.J has up with the tagging 'MR. X COLLECTION' is amusing.

Bill Bergan T206 PSA1?

I think I have a Heinie Berger PSA4 somewhere around here. If I purchased this one and had a mix up with the one I previously owned, how would I know the difference? Which one was housed within the Hollywood Hills of a mansion of an unknown Entertainer?

Well I have to go buy out this Baseball Card stores T206 collection and call it a 'find'. I'll catch up with you guys later.

Coming Soon: Mr. Z

DJ

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Posted By: tbob

You need to make some more of those D311s available....

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Posted By: warshawlaw

or would that be the entirely too appropriate Mr. Why?

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Posted By: D. W.

O

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Posted By: DJ

I would have gone with Mr.X (or Harris Collection) but I'm not sure if it's been taken since only a few holders have the name.

Mr. Y would pose some questions and it would be self-explanatory to 'Why would anyone do this'. Any other letter simply wouldn't work and numbers (Mr. 2) would confuse people.

I couldn't help but laugh when 'The Simpsons' episode came on and it was the episode where Homer buys a computer and builds a Web site where he anonymously spreads local rumor and innuendo, and makes things up when his sources run dry. What is his name in the episode? You got it. Mr. X.

So now what? Random name titles?

One interesting thing of note:

There is a T206 PSA4 of Jack Chesbro from the Mr. X Collection and the current bid is $114.95 with five days left. Another seller on eBay has one with two days left at $179.99 and there are no bids. If the 'Mr. X' one sells for a lot more than the other, suddenly mysterious and unknown celebrities will perhaps of owned some items I throw up on eBay.

DJ

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Posted By: BcD

What a find!!!!!!!!

BY marketing the Tango brand Egg "find" I met Doug Allen in 1992 drove from California to Chicago to meet him in 1993 I believe.

I found most of the highest graded known E-92 Croft's Cocoa and Croft's Candy cards in 94. The dealer I got them from is everyone's favorite-Not! I state this because besides uncataloged it is difficult to find high grade anything of vintage significants in "quanity" which definds "find" to some degree.

Four months ago I "found" 500 of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers stamp albums!

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Posted By: Scott M

BcD,

If you don't mind me asking, what quantity of Crofts Cocoa/Candy cards were involved?

Scott M