Diamond Dust punchboards - to punch or not to punch?

[1880nonsports]

I'm sure he can speak for himself - but the OP is refering to small thin slips of paper like the ones you are referencing that contained numbers - only they depict a baseball player. They have been marketed to today's collector with the idea that these slips when punched were exchanged for one of the promoted prizes.
I'm not sure if the connection between the two has been confirmed with actual evidence or is just conjecture and caviar dreams. While I struggle with bouts of CRS I believe I've seen one in an sgc or psa holder; for whatever that's worth to one's acceptance or denial of the relationship. Like many ancillary issues - it seems these slips whatever their source acceptably stretch the boundaries of what defines a "card" for today's hobbiest.
Not my area of expertise although I have a few nice examples in my collection. I would never take a punch from a board that was complete - even if from the back. One that's been used is probably ripe for exploration of at least one punch............

no guarantees whether written or implied

[bnorth]

Here is a picture of a Diamond Dust Joe DiMaggio graded by SGC. It is the OP's card. I am sure I have seen others graded by SGC and raw ones on eBay.

[jerseygary]

Has anyone seen or owned a Babe Ruth? All the "cards" I have seen so far are of players from the late 1930's.

[Butch7999]

As stated, we're far from expert on these things, and honestly we'd be happy to learn that there were indeed cards
somewhere inside the punchboards or distributed in conjunction with them. But our guess -- only that, just a guess --
would have been that a card such as the one Ben shows is simply a cut-out (like notebook cut-outs, perhaps)
from the front of one of the many varieties of punchboards (granted, we've never seen that particular image
on any of the punchboards we've catalogued, but we're pretty sure we haven't catalogued all of them)...

[GehrigFan]

I've never heard of cards coming in the punch holes, either, but then again, I have no idea what else the DiMaggio "card" is that the OP pictured. That would be awesome if the cards really are rolled up inside.

Two things:

1) Not that is is easy to get access to one, but what if a person knew a doctor with an x-ray machine in his office. Would that reveal something inside of the holes underneath the metal punches?

2) If the OP DOES decide to punch the holes and find out, PLEASE do so on video and post the results for everyone to see. Even if there is nothing inside, if you punch out all the holes on camera, it owuld provide some strong evidence that there is nothing inside. And if you DID find something inside, there may be a little run on unused punch board games shortly thereafter :-)

Mark

[Exhibitman]

I'd love to get to the bottom of the origin of the set. The cards share images with the Salutations Exhibits from 1939-47. They are on paper that shows evidence of having been tightly folded and have numbers on the back [more on these below]. Here is a better view of one front:



They are not on the same paper as is on the front of the punchboard shown, though the design is the same.

Here is a small [6 x 8 x 1/2] DD board with a slip of paper I punched out of it. The paper was tightly folded into a small tubular shape as you can see from the ridges across its face. The big black number was meant to match with the three digit codes on the players depicted [this one #563 happened not to match a player; it was a losing punch]; the red numbers are the serial number of the board, so you could not stockpile old slips and switch them. I suspect that the reason there is a number on the back of my card is precisely that; it was a serial # of the board meant to tie the winning punch to the board so it could not be reused.



How thick is the punchboard with the cards depicted?

[GasHouseGang]

Couldn't that "card" just be hand-cut off the punch board? It sure looks a lot like those cards that are around the front of the second board shown.

[darkhorse9]

I don't know if it means anything, but those poses of the players on the bottom board are the same poses as the Salutation Exhibits series. I wonder if there's a connection.

[Exhibitman]

Butch, assuming it was accordion folded the card would still be 1" or so wide, so the depth of the tube would have to be an inch, making the board with the plies of tissue paper and drilled boards front and back about 1 1/4" thick overall. I have seen punch boards that thick, just not a DD one. If I had seen a DD of the right thickness I'd have purchased it and punched the stuffing out of it.

The connection with the Salutations is likely the firm that did the artwork for the cards reusing the art for these gambling tools.

[Butch7999]

Hi Adam -- just to clarify what we're vaguely theorizing, we can picture how the 1"x2" rolling-paper-thin card
would be accordion folded into a strip 1" wide by 1/16" high, then coiled up into a tight little circle, or spiral,
still just that 1/16" thick and about the diameter of one of the punch-holes. Since it was coiled, or rolled,
there would be no residual fold marks running vertically, and the punchboard would have to be only thick enough
to accommodate the 1/16" thickness of the coiled card. Again, just a guess, while noting again that
we were likely wrong about everything else on this topic from the get-go...