Hobby history: Card dealers of the 1960s, part 2: Yeko and Oreck

[njdunkin1]

Originally Posted by Griffins

Interesting about the star card prices. I ordered T206's a lot from Card Collectors Company.

That is awesome, it must have been so cool getting a free Uzit. Do you recall what you were paying at the time?

Aside--'51 Bowman Mantles for a dollar...gee whiz.

[moeson]

Bruce Yeko used to set up at the mid 70's NY ASCCA shows with very limited stock, but it did include a tall stack of Red Heart Mantles at a $1 per.

[mikemb]

I bought many cards from Bruce. I would make my choices and I gave my dad the cash and he would write out a check for me. Packs of cards were a nickel then so spending a dollar or two was big money to me.

I could not wait for the package to arrive. The only sad part was when you opened it up and found the small credit slip, meaning some of your choices were not available.

Mike

[spec]

Originally Posted by mikemb

I bought many cards from Bruce. I would make my choices and I gave my dad the cash and he would write out a check for me. Packs of cards were a nickel then so spending a dollar or two was big money to me.

I could not wait for the package to arrive. The only sad part was when you opened it up and found the small credit slip, meaning some of your choices were not available.

Mike

Mike,
I remember that miserable feeling well, even after 50 years.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by mikemb

...

I could not wait for the package to arrive. The only sad part was when you opened it up and found the small credit slip, meaning some of your choices were not available.

Mike

Same things with Larry Frisch (RIP). He would send what he had and a note saying what he didn't have, IIRC. His grading was always a surprise too.

[Paul S]

One person I don't really hear much about anymore is Gar Miller. I did a few send-a-ways with him in the Sixties. Never got an IOU and I was picking postwar HOFers, or soon-to-be HOFers. He always included a short personalized note. According to his website he is still active but hasn't done a show in decades. Anybody else here deal with him?

[Griffins]

Originally Posted by Paul S

One person I don't really hear much about anymore is Gar Miller. I did a few send-a-ways with him in the Sixties. Never got an IOU and I was picking postwar HOFers, or soon-to-be HOFers. He always included a short personalized note. According to his website he is still active but hasn't done a show in decades. Anybody else here deal with him?

I bought a card from Gar a few years ago
Thanked him for being so kind to me as a kid 30 years earlier and sending me his book on cards
He sent me back an updated copy with a nice note. Class act.

[moeson]

Originally Posted by Paul S

One person I don't really hear much about anymore is Gar Miller. I did a few send-a-ways with him in the Sixties. Never got an IOU and I was picking postwar HOFers, or soon-to-be HOFers. He always included a short personalized note. According to his website he is still active but hasn't done a show in decades. Anybody else here deal with him?

Gar was the first dealer that I ever bought cards from back in 1971. Out of nostalgia, I recently checked out his website and bought a few cards from him. Same great service after all these years!

[Jerry G]

This is the July 1, 1966 price list that starts out with the announcement that Wholesale Cards has bought out Marshall Oreck. Bruce Yecko is justifiably very proud that the new catalog (see David's post above for scan) will be similar to the one that Marshall "has published for the last three years, but with 50 more sets" and promised that the catalog will be "the most complete book of information on recent issues ever published." I emphatically agree.

With each order you would receive a new price list. Often, Bruce would place comments or state which cards were currently in stock along the boarder of the price list. On this one, he responded to my question of availability of a regional issue, 1965 Big Red Biographies and offered to pay $0.15 each for mine. I wasn't selling then, but 51 years later, I did and received substantially more from a advanced net54 football collector.

Directly below the red ink message, you might notice a cut out corner of the price list. This is where Bruce wrote out my credit slip, which was obviously redeemed. I'm sure it was for less than a dollar as my total orders were usually between $2 and $4. I wasn't smart enough to ask my dad to write a check, but I was smart enough to tape down all the nickles, dimes and quarters.

[jsq]

Originally Posted by Paul S

One person I don't really hear much about anymore is Gar Miller. I did a few send-a-ways with him in the Sixties. Never got an IOU and I was picking postwar HOFers, or soon-to-be HOFers. He always included a short personalized note. According to his website he is still active but hasn't done a show in decades. Anybody else here deal with him?

yes i remember Gar, i bought his "baseball card collecting guidebook" he sold in the 1970's. that book helped move the hobby forward as he contacted many major city library systems and they bought bulk quantitiy for distribution to all their branches in the 1970's. before becketts guide their was a lack of info for the public, this froze many collections in place as people did not know what to do with their collection. Jim's price guide followed Gar's rudimentary guide and really broke the ice with the mass public.

Gar is a nice guy and a true hobby pioneer, he was also a very good baseball player thru college.

Gar was getting a volume of cards as early as the 50's as i recall, he purchased from friends and acquaintances when he was at college playing ball etc for 1950's that was pretty forward thinking.

talked to Gar about 3 years ago and he is a font of knowledge on the hobby history. Gar was an early pioneer in hotel buying trips and hobby advertising to the general public.

Gar and Mike Aronstein are two VERY underapreciated hobby pioneers. they did a lot of work educating the public and making the hobby.

hello Gar if you are reading this.

[Leon]

Got my first R319 Ruth #144 from Gar, from a Xerox scan he sent me.....many years ago. Great thread.

Originally Posted by jsq

yes i remember Gar, i bought his "baseball card collecting guidebook" he sold in the 1970's. that book helped move the hobby forward as he contacted many major city library systems and they bought bulk quantitiy for distribution to all their branches in the 1970's. before becketts guide their was a lack of info for the public, this froze many collections in place as people did not know what to do with their collection. Jim's price guide followed Gar's rudimentary guide and really broke the ice with the mass public.

Gar is a nice guy and a true hobby pioneer, he was also a very good baseball player thru college.

Gar was getting a volume of cards as early as the 50's as i recall, he purchased from friends and acquaintances when he was at college playing ball etc for 1950's that was pretty forward thinking.

talked to Gar about 3 years ago and he is a font of knowledge on the hobby history. Gar was an early pioneer in hotel buying trips and hobby advertising to the general public.

Gar and Mike Aronstein are two VERY underapreciated hobby pioneers. they did a lot of work educating the public and making the hobby.

hello Gar if you are reading this.

[Jerry G]

Originally Posted by Leon

Same things with Larry Frisch (RIP). He would send what he had and a note saying what he didn't have, IIRC. His grading was always a surprise too.

If you were a college student in the 70's... you might understand how this credit slip was overlooked.

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by moeson

Bruce Yeko used to set up at the mid 70's NY ASCCA shows with very limited stock, but it did include a tall stack of Red Heart Mantles at a $1 per.

Howie, my dad (Mike Aronstein) was a host of those those shows. I've heard lots of stories . It's great to see his name listed in the 1963 publication above, collecting as a 23yo. I'm 38 now and he's 77.

That's by far the earliest mention of his name in regards to the hobby that I've seen.

[irv]

Originally Posted by mikemb

I bought many cards from Bruce. I would make my choices and I gave my dad the cash and he would write out a check for me. Packs of cards were a nickel then so spending a dollar or two was big money to me.

I could not wait for the package to arrive. The only sad part was when you opened it up and found the small credit slip, meaning some of your choices were not available.

Mike

No doubt it was!

Comparing those prices to today, what would the $1 equate to?

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by irv

No doubt it was!

Comparing those prices to today, what would the $1 equate to?

According to the first online inflation calculator I found, $1 in 1965 is the equivalent of $7.66 in 2016. That sounds about right.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by trdcrdkid

According to the first online inflation calculator I found, $1 in 1965 is the equivalent of $7.66 in 2016. That sounds about right.

I bought a box.of Topps cards for 2.40, they cost a lot more than 18.38 today.

[irv]

Originally Posted by trdcrdkid

According to the first online inflation calculator I found, $1 in 1965 is the equivalent of $7.66 in 2016. That sounds about right.

Surprised it is not more? I originally thought at least 10X more but then thought it is likely even higher than that?

Thanks.

[Griffins]

Originally Posted by njdunkin1

That is awesome, it must have been so cool getting a free Uzit. Do you recall what you were paying at the time?

Aside--'51 Bowman Mantles for a dollar...gee whiz.

T206's were .50, so that is what I paid for the Uzit. Flipped it for $10 at the monthly Garden Grove show a few months later. T205's were .75 or $1, they jumped a bit.

[njdunkin1]

Originally Posted by Griffins

T206's were .50, so that is what I paid for the Uzit.

That is awesome.

[akleinb611]

Not to hijack this very interesting thread, but I wrote up a mini-memoir for SCD back in 2011, about my collecting experiences with Mssrs. Yeko, Gelman and Fritsch. It doesn't contain as many surprising facts, but is rather a more subjective account of how I discovered each of these dealers. I've never allowed a lack of knowledge to stop me.

This appeared in the January 4, 2011 issue of SCD - \

http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.co...gelman_frisch/

Hope you guys enjoy it.

And as for this thread, it proves that you can always learn something new. I had no idea that Marshall Oreck was a member of THAT Oreck family. I immediately told my wife that whenever she's vacuuming the living room, she's actually paying tribute to the early days of the hobby.

She just gave me that look many of us have received from our spouse, the look that says, "Dear God, this is the man I chose to be the father of my children."

Alan Kleinberger

[trdcrdkid]

Thanks to everybody for the nice comments, especially the recollections of buying from Yeko, Gelman, and Oreck, and the additional price lists and stuff from back then. I have quite a bit more, but I could only include so much because you're limited to 18 images per post, and I was kind of trying to tell a story here. I'll certainly post more as I have time.

By the way, not only is Bruce Yeko still around and very active in his 70s, but so are Marshall Oreck, who is 88 and lives in New Orleans, and Marshall's brother David Oreck of vacuum cleaner fame, who is 93.

[Baseball Rarities]

Awesome stuff. Thanks so much David.

[Paul S]

Originally Posted by Griffins

T206's were .50, so that is what I paid for the Uzit. Flipped it for $10 at the monthly Garden Grove show a few months later. T205's were .75 or $1, they jumped a bit.

About the same, or a little more, for me on a T206 Duffy Red Hindu. In those days I did it for the player, not the back. Just a few years ago it got graded "none higher" - possibly still is - and went to auction.