1935 Wheaties

[BobC]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

I have no idea why anyone especially members of this forum would say that Wheaties Backs are not Baseball cards. Every major catalig lists them as Baseball cards. The first trade I made with John Ramirez in 1975 was a 1960 Post Cereal for a Gehringer with most of the box intact. So in OP's view since both the 1960 post and the wheaties were from cereal boxes we were not actually trading baseball cards.
From the begining baseball player images have been issued along with various products to boost sales. I feel the pain of poster Keith Thompson who's Mom would not buy Wheaties. My Mon wouldn't buy Kelloggs and definitely no Pop Tarts despite the cards promised in the Box.
But yes Bob and Kieth Wheaties are Baseball cards. So are Post Cereals, Hunters, Briggs Eskay Meats 1910 Orange Borders and other candy boxes. And every other issue that some fortunate youngster cut out, or off of a box. A box they either convinced their Mom to buy or saved their own pennies to bring home.
They exist today because they were treasured and preserved by the card collectors of the past. And they will be passed along to card collectors in the future becase they are treasured by many card collectors today...but like all things they are not treasured by everyone.

Because these early Wheaties items are just like you stated, they're the backs of the boxes, whereas the Post cereal items were cut from the backs and are basically the same/similar standard size and shape of what are considered "cards" in the more mainstream hobby definition of what a "card" is thought of as by many collectors. I myself enjoy and have collected many early Wheaties items, and don't really care much about what does or doesn't constitute a "card" when it comes to defining such items. Forgive me for merely attempting to respond to the OP's question by pointing out that not everyone considers the entire back of a Wheaties box as a true baseball card, and that will likely include many Net54 members as well. There is no one, single correct definition as to what really constitutes a "true baseball card". It can, and does, vary from person to person. Again, I merely tried to respond to the OP's post, and focused somewhat on his implied question of why these Wheaties items don't seem to garner the same overall interest with collectors that other items do.

You mention how these Wheaties backs are listed in catalogs, but so are things like Sports Stamps, PX7 Double Header coins, German Transfers, M101-2 Sporting News Supplements, and on and on, but I don't think anyone normally considers any of those such items as "cards" at all. If you consider Wheaties carton backs as cards, great. And if you don't consider them as cards, that is great also. I simply consider them valuable collectibles, and leave it to others to get worked up as to what a particular collectible is considered as. To each, their own!

And by the way, where in my original response to the OP did I ever definitively state I personally consider these Wheaties carton backs are not cards? I didn't say they were or weren't cards, yet the very first line of your post seems to insinuate I did since you specifically chose and quoted my earlier post to respond to, and then there's your direct response, naming both myself and another poster (Keith), and asserting to us both that these Wheaties backs are definitely cards. The OP never said these weren't cards either.