New to zeenut cards

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by Ghiselin

I recently acquired a small collection of ZEENUT Pacific Coast League baseball cards. Mostly 29/30 series, a few with coupons. These cards are not packaged, just loose cards in a box. My research to date indicates that there are "sets" of these cards but I can't determine what constitutes a set. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Always fun to get a box of old cards 'out in the wild', which I assume is the case if these cards were in a box loose. Adam's post above gives you a nice visual of the 1929 and 1930 sets, the Horne Zeenut 'book' is a definite must if interested in Zeenuts, Mark is indeed the best one to contact, but until then, below is some basic 1929 and 1930 Zeenut information to chew on:

Separate sets of Zeenut cards were issued in both 1929 and 1930. The 1929 set consisted of 168 cards of players of 8 Pacific Coast League teams: Hollywood (12 cards), Los Angeles (24), Oakland (23), Portland (20), Sacramento (21), San Francisco Missions (23), San Francisco Seals (24), and Seattle (21).

The 1930 set consisted of 186 cards of players from the same 8 PCL teams:
Hollywood (20), Los Angeles (23), Oakland (30), Portland (14), Sacramento (22), San Francisco Missions (26), San Francisco Seals (28), and Seattle (23).

The cards in both years originally came with attached coupons on the bottom. Printed on this coupon on the 1929 cards is "This offer expires April 1st, 1930. The 1930 cards instead have "This offer expires April 1st, 1931".

Each of the player photo portions of the 1929 cards have a printed "29", while the 1930 cards have "30".

The biggest name cards in the 1929 set would be Ernie Nevers of the Missions, a football HOF player, baseball Hall of Famer Ernie Lombardi (before his MLB career), Jimmie Reese (popular player/coach and a Babe Ruth roommate), HOF pitcher Lefty Gomez, Henry Oana (Hawaiian born player), but also plenty of other notable and desired PCL stars and ones that went onto (or after) some success in the majors. The 1930 set includes another card of Lombardi, as well Nevers, and Harry Rosenberg (popular card of Jewish player), and other popular players.

Hopefully this helps identify what you have, and so that we can get some vicarious thrills, keep us informed with what you ended up with.

Brian