Help with issue identification

[Shoebox]

Its unfortunate the condition isn't better but you have some nice non mainstream issue cards in there. The Golden Press set has a lot of collectors that really like it. I personally prefer it to the more well regarded Fleer set of the same year. A group of those that included a Dimaggio sold in the Live Auction not long ago. The cards in it were heavily water damaged but it still got more than I would have expected.

[kailes2872]

Thanks Dustin. It has definitely been an education. The collection included cards that I had no exposure to - Hires rootbeer, B18 blankets, the ones included in this post and a few others. It was oddballs - 2 here, 3 there, etc., but it has definitely been an education.

I scanned the back of the cards. I then lifted the picture from the archives that compares it to the reprints from the "find". At first, I thought that they were the '49 mystery issue, but based upon the visual comparison, the backs sure look like the reprints from the 80's find.

[Shoebox]

That's what they look like to me. I see these square corner variations on eBay alot. Some claim them to be the actual Bond Bread issue which they are not. I thought they could be what gets refered to as a Bond Bread Exhibit but the backs of the authenticated ones I have seen are much darker than yours. Lots of those you have are listed in raw form with healthy BINs.

[brian1961]

The 1961 Golden Press Hall of Fame that Ben speaks of is indeed a cherished issue to a lot of us baseball card collectors. They aren't valuable, except in graded MINT (still relatively cheap) or GEM MINT. They were among the first baseball cards I ever got. I first saw them in first grade when my buddy Len brought them to school to show the guys. He told me you could get them at the Jewel supermarket in Skokie, Illinois where we both lived.

So the next time my Mom went shopping I accompanied her to Jewel, looked around and saw the carousel display of Golden Press booklets and there I found it! Fortunately, she said yes when I asked her if she would buy the booklet for me.

Golden Press was a company that I believe made numerous non-sport card sets and put them out in large folders. The cards were die-cut on the pages and could easily be taken out. The folder contained 33 different cards. There was only the one series of Baseball Hall-of-Famers. It cost around 39-59 cents. It was probably issued nationally in places like supermarkets.

The quality and selection of the Golden Press colorized pictures was superb. Another respondent said they were much better than the Fleer and they really were. Some of the Fleers are very nice, and the mixture of background colors adds to their appeal. But the Golden Press is, if memory serves, completely composed of full-length action poses that are just so much superior to Fleer it should have been very embarrassing to them.

The fact they're relatively easy to find really should not matter. They're simply beautiful cards. Fleers are rarer, but they're often flat out ugly. Golden Press were beautiful and today they still are. They were a means of introducing me to pre-war baseball players.

'Nuf said. ---Brian Powell