Buck Barker writing on card backs

[brianp-beme]

Thought I would share a couple of neat Buck Barker cards.



The one on the right is a 1931 McDonald of Portland with what appears to be a caricature of Jimmy Cagney transferred onto the backside. This didn't deter Buck from writing all of Henry "Hank" McDonalds baseball vital info along each edge of the card.

The one on the left is a great example of the importance of Buck Barker's work on identifying players pictured on less mainstream sets such as the Zeenut issues. The card is a 1925 Zeenut of Haughy of San Francisco. Buck did a lot of research at the Sporting News headquarters in Missouri, and as far as I can tell brought along his cards as 'notepads'. On this card he obviously had difficulty finding any player matches to Haughy. At the top he writes a note to himself 'Try Hughes' and then probably added 'Not at SN' (Sporting News). Then he also notes that he 'Can't find SN as' and lists 'Haugh, Hough, Haughey, Haughee, Hughey, Hughie, Hugheey, Hughie, Hugh.' You can see the extent of research he did to try to identify this player...and you can imagine the countless hours pouring over documents and microfiche just to provide such information about a slew of elusive and obscure players pictured on Zeenuts and Old Judges, etc., all just for the general good of the collecting community. It is quite telling that the identity of player pictured on the 1925 Haughy Zeenut has still not been identified (at least as of five years ago when I last looked).

So no, I will never erase these chicken scratches, and I hope others haven't and will not.

Brian

[Spike]

I picked up some cards at the National with hand-written player updates on the back and an advanced collector told me to look up Buck Barker's own updates, such as cards in this thread. He also called out the T207 Irv Lewis, which I've failed to find so far. Anyone know why that one in particular? Did Buck write something NSFW on it?

[Yoda]

I hold and have owned before a Pinkertons Cobb - fielding with Buck's printed name and address on it.

[oaks1912]

Spike,
Send me a scan of the writing. I know Buck's handwriting pretty well. It was really nice to see you this weekend in Chicago....MM

[brianp-beme]

Mark is definitely the Buck man, capable of spotting his penmanship from a quarter of a mile away.

Here are some more cards with Buck Barker's handwriting on the back just to train your eyes. The one that says "Mitchell" on the back is a little deceptive in that most of the handwriting on the card is not his, but the "Oliver" above the Mitchell and the "Nagy 81" in the bottom right corner of that card is his handwriting (which happens to indicate who Buck obtained the card from, Frank Nagy in this case, and year obtained - 1981).

Brian

[RCMcKenzie]

Originally Posted by Spike

I picked up some cards at the National with hand-written player updates on the back and an advanced collector told me to look up Buck Barker's own updates, such as cards in this thread. He also called out the T207 Irv Lewis, which I've failed to find so far. Anyone know why that one in particular? Did Buck write something NSFW on it?

My recollection is that I bought the Lewis on here. It was billed as prior Barker and Olbermann. I think I sold it with B&L around 2010. I see the listing, but no photo in their archives. It may be on here in a thread somewhere. It had red ink writing all over the back in a circle. Just bio and stat content.