topic: why are exhibits so underrated as a set?

[Mungo Hungo]

Originally Posted by darkhorse9

I actually tried collecting the complete "set" of Salutation cards and came within six cards of completing.
It was then I realized there was no such thing as a "set"
. It's all a bunch of individual cards. Therefore completing it became a useless venture
I broke it all up, sold them individually and moved on to actual pre-war sets.

To me, this is kind of an "emperor has no clothes comment" -- you're clearly right, but so many people turn somersaults to avoid that conclusion.

I'm not one of the people who claim that Exhibits are not cards. They're literally made of cardboard and they picture baseball players in uniforms. But I also think that there's a very good reason for many people to discount them, at least the "1939-46 set" and the "1947-66 set."

To my mind, one of the main components of most baseball cards is their temporal feature--that is, they're intended to memorialize a player at a certain time, and are intended to be released only over a short period, usually no more than a year, but occasionally over a period of 2-to-3 years. The early Exhibits fit that description, but the "1939-46" and "1947-66" cards certainly do not.

From a Pre-War Cards article:

"[W]hile many collectors assume all of the Exhibits with salutations ceased in 1946, that isn’t really true. Some of the Salutations Exhibits were printed into the 1950s and even 1960s."

From a Sports Collectors Daily article on the 1947-66 cards:

"Many cards were redistributed year after year with new players added over the years. Some players that remained on the same teams had many cards printed while others that changed teams may have fewer ones."

In short, the 1939-66 Exhibits (aside from a couple of separate sets that are not often discussed) were, from my reading of things, reprinted at will for a couple of decades. In this, they're similar to team-issued photocards and postcards issued by Rowe, Elder, McCarthy and others. Again, that doesn't mean that the Exhibits aren't cards. But a card that can be reprinted year after year is very different in my book than one that is issued for a year (or maybe even two or three) and never again.