Mount Rushmore of Industry Icons

[conor912]

Originally Posted by Tim Kindler

Mark Macrae- The West Coast Guru!

I agree wholeheartedly. I have never personally known anyone in the hobby with more knowledge and genuine joy and willingness to share it.

[clydepepper]

Burdick, Lipset, Lemke & Beckett

but shout-out to three Net54 Members I've learned a lot from:

Barry Sloate
Ted Zanidakis
Leon Luckey

Thanks gentlemen

[steve B]

Lots of people mentioned were in what I figured as "hundreds of others"


Certainly if Beckett is in, Dennis Eckes should be as well.

I like the eventual hall of fame idea, The GBSCC did something like that for a while, I'm not sure if they still do. If I remember correctly it was a yearly award.


One of the stamp groups I'm in does something similar, at the yearly meeting they have someone sign the roll of distinguished philatelists. Considering some of the names on there, it's a major honor.


Going with a very modern look at things, I'd have to consider Scot Reader, Ted Z, and Pat R. Some of what they've done would be impressive in any hobby, and I think that someday their sort of more detailed look at complex sets will become more common.

(and I'm sure I've missed a few people doing similar things with different sets)

[Buythatcard]

I can't believe that everyone has over looked Leon Luckey.

I believe that the Net54 board has lifted the card market to where it is today. With its wealth of knowledge it had stirred up the hobby. Without Leon, there would not be a Net54 board.

[Robert_Lifson]

Lots of great and extremely deserving names listed. A few important names that have had immense positive impact on the field that I don’t think have come up yet:

Keith Olbermann,
Bert Sugar,
Brian Brusokas,
Michael O’Keeffe (writers wing!),
Bruce Yeko,
and definitely Charles Bray.

Few were as important to the field in the earliest days of the organized hobby (from the 1930s to the 1960s!) as Charles Bray. This is just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many others that are extremely worthy of note by any criteria. I especially agree that the hobby publishers such as Dan Dischley and John Stommen (and in more modern high-tech times: Leon Luckey!) are among the most important contributors to the field, providing a way for collectors to communicate with one another, more easily learn about collecting, and just in general playing a huge role in helping the hobby be accessible and to grow.

[NiceDocter]

My Mom and all the other moms out there who despite the cards all over the basement and multiple DEFCON 1 threats......NEVER THREW AWAY MY BASEBALL CARDS! Thanks Mom!!!!

[trdcrdkid]

This is reminiscent of the Card Collectors' Hall of Fame, which Irv Lerner and some others created in the early 1970s. I wrote a post about it in May 2017, here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?p=1666561. I've pasted in that post below, including the nine people who were selected in the Hall of Fame's only two years of existence.

*********************
n 1970, prominent collector Irv Lerner, with the help of Bob Jaspersen (editor of Sport Fan) and Dick Reuss (co-founder of the Detroit convention that same year), published "Who's Who in Card Collecting", which listed names, addresses, and short bios of any collectors who wanted to be included. One feature of this book was a "Card Collectors' Hall of Fame", with elaborate rules for voting in new members each year. Six Hall of Fame members were listed in that first 1970 editon: Jefferson Burdick, Walter Corson, Charles Bray, Preston Orem, E. C. Wharton-Tigar, and Robert J. Payne. In the 1971 second edition of the "Who's Who", Lerner listed three new inductees: Buck Barker, Lionel Carter, and John D. Wagner. That was the last edition of the "Who's Who" to be published, and those were the last additions to the Hall of Fame.

Last year, I posted a longish article that Dick Reuss wrote in 1970 about the Card Collectors' Hall of Fame, and in the comments Leon posted the first few pages of "Who's Who in Card Collecting" (though not the pages about the Hall of Fame). That post is here: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=218788. As I also mentioned in the comments, George Vrechek had written an article in 2011 about collector directories, including Lerner's "Who's Who" and its Hall of Fame, in which he provided brief summary bios of Lerner's nine inductees. That article is here: http://www.oldbaseball.com/refs/Coll...36_to_1971.pdf

Since I wrote that post early last year, several of the nine Hall of Fame members have been the subjects of my and Leon's hobby history posts. I wrote a lengthy post about Preston Orem, here:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=228930

And a similarly lengthy post about Walter Corson, here:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=232220

I've also posted many articles by Lionel Carter, including his obituary of Jefferson Burdick (published in Card Collector's Bulletin in 1963, and in revised form in Sport Hobbyist in 1973), and his obituary of Bob Jaspersen and Buck Barker, published first in SCD and then in revised form in the program for the 1983 National:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=224897
http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=219926

Leon has continued to post the hobby letters of John D. Wagner in this thread:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=207944

And just yesterday he revived this 2013 thread where he posted letters that E. C. Wharton-Tigar wrote to Buck Barker:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=166215

Around the same time that Leon started the Wagner letters thread almost two years ago, I posted an article about Wagner that appeared in the 1982 Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide (aka the Beckett annual guide):

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=207915

Also, in the recent REA auction I won Wagner's copies of the 1939 American Card Catalog and the first 30 issues of Card Collector's Bulletin (1939-1944), outbidding Leon, and from those I've been posting a lot of interesting articles by Burdick, plus some by Bray from when he took over the bimonthly card auctions in CCB.

All this has made me think of the Card Collectors' Hall of Fame, and so I thought I would post the full pages about it from the 1971 "Who's Who in Card Collecting", including the bios of the nine inductees. All of these guys except for Edward Payne (who was a postcard collector) were very influential in the history of the baseball card hobby, and anybody writing about that history should know about them. Plus, the whole idea of such a Hall of Fame now seems like kind of a quaint relic of a bygone time in the hobby, when some people who had collected T206s as kids were still active collectors.

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by NiceDocter

My Mom and all the other moms out there who despite the cards all over the basement and multiple DEFCON 1 threats......NEVER THREW AWAY MY BASEBALL CARDS! Thanks Mom!!!!

But we can thank all of the moms who did throw away baseball cards for making them so valuable today.

[clydepepper]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

Burdick, Lipset, Lemke & Beckett

but shout-out to three Net54 Members I've learned a lot from:

Barry Sloate
Ted Zanidakis
Leon Luckey

Thanks gentlemen

Originally Posted by Buythatcard

I can't believe that everyone has over looked Leon Luckey.
I believe that the Net54 board has lifted the card market to where it is today. With its wealth of knowledge it had stirred up the hobby. Without Leon, there would not be a Net54 board.

NOT Everyone

[rjackson44]

Lein luckey and barry sloat

[Leon]

Originally Posted by rjackson44

Lein luckey and barry sloat

Thanks for the kind words but assuredly I am raking leaves with Barry on this one. And I agree with Barry, there is Burdick at the pinnacle and then everyone else.

[oldjudge]

Originally Posted by rjackson44

Lein luckey and barry sloat

Octavio-The real Mt Rushmore has four great presidents. Are Barry and Leon in your top four hobby contributors ever, or are you drastically (very drastically) expanding the number of subjects for the hobby version?