One year later

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Posted By: Ed McCollum

I got my first card with his stamp back about 1991 or '92. Then twelve years later, I saw another on eBay and bid on it. Then a thread started on the board about t cards with rubber stampings, and what they may have been stamped for. It got me started on "why not try and rebuild a collection that could possibly have been started almost 100 years ago".

What I do know about Ulric Howe McCormick is he was born on July 31, 1895, died sometime in July, 1976, served in WWI, married soon after the war, and never seemed to stray too far from Gainesville, Fla. His birth and death certificates, his service papers and marriage license all came from the same county.

One theory on the board was that early collectors stamped all cards they had dupes of and would send them to other collectors to try and make trades. That way, they could keep track of what was theirs, or someone elses. But it strikes me as strange that all of his cards I seen or purchased so far are either Piedmont, Hindu, or Old Mill ... no Sweet Caps? They would seem pretty common, especially if you were mailing trades to other collectors.

Guess value is a relative thing...I like them, so that is what I buy. So far, 16 of those I've purchased had been graded (I busted them all out), with grades ranging from PSA 1 to 4 (all with the MK qualifier) and SGC 10 or 20. Can't really imagine that unless you were specifically looking for a certain stamp that it would make the card any more valuable to anyone else.

I do know of 33 others out there. Six I have no idea who has them (they were purchased from eBay before I started this quest, but shown in group scans as the seller continued to sell other cards they had), and most of the others are in private collections that might be available if I could find replacements for them. I'll just keep plugging away at it and see where I'm at in five, ten, twenty years from now.