Your Information Resource for Vintage Baseball Cards
  eNews Issue #105 (January 2013)         www.oldcardboard.com


Please Note: If images are not loading in this email, click here.

Welcome to Old Cardboard, the most complete reference resource for information about collecting vintage baseball cards and related memorabilia.  More information about this eNewsletter and its companion website and magazine are found at the bottom of this page.

Contents:
1. Updated Auction and Show Calendar
2. Featured Set: 1947 U011 Signal Gasoline
3. Latest Additions to the OldCardboard.com Website
4. Johnny Football's Sensational Heisman Season
5. News Briefs (A Digest of Recent Hobby Happenings)


1. Updated Auction and Show Calendar

The following is a summary of vintage card events coming up in the next 30-45 days. For the most current listings on additional vintage card shows and auctions, see the Key Events Calendar on the Old Cardboard website.

Have an event that needs to be on the OC Calendar?
Email editor@oldcardboard.com.


OC eNewsletter Sponsor

January 2013

17Internet Bagger's Auctions (see website for details).
17Internet Sports Card Link (see website for details).
24Phone/Internet Goodwin & Co. Auction (see website for details).
24Internet Sirius Sportscards (see website for details).
30Phone/Internet Clean Sweep Auctions (see website for details).
31Phone/Internet Sterling Sports Auctions (see website for details).
31Phone/Internet Mile High Auction (see website for details).

February 2013

2Internet Love of the Game Auction (see website for details).
4-10Phone/Internet PWCC (see website for details).
7Phone/Internet Huggins & Scott Auctions (see website for details).
23-24New York City Heritage New York Sports Auction (see website for details).
27-18Phone/Internet Legendary Auctions (see website for details).
28Phone/Internet Sterling Sports Auctions (see website for details).


2. Featured Set: 1947 U011 Signal Gasoline

This set of 89 cards features players from five of the eight teams then participating in the Pacific Coast League. The cards were part of a promotion by Signal Gasoline and distributed at the company's local gas stations in the home towns for each team.

The unnumbered cards are listed in the American Card Catalog as set UO11. It was the second and largest of three baseball sets sponsored by Signal starting in 1938.


1947 Signal Gasoline -- Front

Back
The 3-1/2 x 5-1/2-inch black and white cards feature detailed line drawings of the subject player along with illustrated career highlights in cartoon format. The player's name, team and position are also prominently displayed on the card front.

The backs contain a more detailed career narrative along with a reference to the radio station for each team's locale and an ad for Signal Gasoline.

The five teams represented in the 1947 Signal Gasoline set are the Hollywood Stars, the Los Angeles Angels, the Oakland Oaks, the Sacramento Solons and the Seattle Rainiers. Of these, the cars for the Stars, Angels and Oaks were apparently distributed in greater quantity and are the most common among today's collectors. Those for the Solons, and especially the Rainiers, are noticeably more difficult to find.

In addition to the players featured on the cards, at least two former baseball players, Fred Haney and Al Demaree, left their marks on the 1947 Signal Gasoline set.

Fred Haney was billed by the sponsor as "Signal's Ace Sportscaster" for all Hollywood Stars' games broadcast on local radio station KLAC. As a result, Haney was named on the back of every card in the Hollywood Stars subset. In addition, he was featured as the subject on the front of one of the cards. According to Haney's card, he had been voted most valuable player in the Pacific Coast League some fifteen years earlier. Haney had also served as manager of the American League's St. Louis Browns from 1939 through 1941.

Al Demaree, a pitcher for the New York Giants and other Major League teams from 1912 through 1919, produced all of the artwork for the 1947 Signal Gasoline cards. A syndicated sports cartoonist for many years after his Major League service ended, Demaree also created the artwork for other baseball card sets. These include the R304 Demaree Die-cuts issued by Dietz Gum Company in 1934, the 1935 R332 Schutter-Johnson Candy set, and the 1938 R323 Goudey "Heads Up" issue.


Restored Signal Service Station

Period Roadmap
The Signal Gasoline Company was founded in 1922 by Sam Mosher. The California-based company first produced gasoline from natural gas. In 1928, the company changed its name to Signal Oil & Gas, entering into oil production the same year. For the next several decades, including 1947 and 1948 when it produced its only baseball card sets, the company marketed its gasoline service stations under the Signal Gasoline name.

Signal merged with the Garrett Corporation, a Los Angeles-based aerospace company, and in 1968 adopted "The Signal Companies" as its corporate name.

The Signal companies merged with Allied Corporation in 1985. By the turn of the millennium, the then-merged Allied-Signal Corporation had completed another transformation--and became a component of Honeywell Corp.

Side Note: the Signal gas station pictured above was recently restored to its original look, complete with vintage pumps, by Rod Phillips, a Portland, Oregon developer. The station is located at 8302 N. Lombard Street in the St. Johns area of that city. The front of the vintage road map (above right) confirms Signal Gasoline's 1940's architectural style used for its network of service stations. The restored station has been designated as a historic landmark and is now the home of Signal Station Pizza restaurant. So next time you're in Portland, you may want to stop by and try a slice!

A Set Profile and Checklist for the 1947 Signal Gasoline cards are provided on the Old Cardboard website.


OC eNewsletter Sponsor

3. Latest Additions to the OldCardboard.com Website

We are continually expanding the Old Cardboard website with more set profiles, checklists and card galleries. Recent (past 30-40 days) additions include:

Set Profiles have been added for:
1947 UO11 Signal Gasoline

Set Checklists have been added for:
1908-09   PC760   Rose Company PC's (several corrections and updates have been added)
1947   UO11   Signal Gasoline

Updating the website with checklists and full set galleries for additional vintage sets is an ongoing project, so check back often to check out the latest additions. There are now many thousands of card images on the website and the list continues to grow every month. We welcome and encourage feedback with checklist additions, card images, error corrections and suggestions. Please send all input to editor@oldcardboard.com.

In addition to these additions to the Old Cardboard website, we continue to expand and refine our eBay Custom Search Links to make finding vintage baseball cards on eBay easier than ever. The results of these searches are continuously changing, so check back often to find the most recent listings.


4. Johnny Football's Sensational Heisman Season

In our first 104 consecutive monthly issues of the Old Cardboard eNewsletter, we rarely deviate from our vintage baseball theme. However, in light of the record-setting performance of Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manzel (aka Johnny Football) and the first-ever freshman to win a Heisman trophy, your editor could not resist going slightly off-topic in Issue #105.

We would like to bring to the attention of our readers the following 8-minute video featuring all 47 of Manzel's touchdowns this past season. Several of these TDs led to a very memorable win over the national champion Crimson Tide--and on Alabama's home field.

Oh, and by the way, your editor would also like to remind our readers that he is an Aggie alum that grew up in College Station and recently published a book about the early history of the school.

Gig 'em Aggies! And enjoy the video.


Note: the above image links to the video on the YouTube website.


5. News Briefs (A Digest of Recent Hobby Happenings)

Clean Sweep Celebrates 200th Auction. With its inaugural auction of 2013 that closes January 30, Clean Sweep Auctions is celebrating the company's 200th auction event spanning the past 17 years. Congrats to Steve Verkman and his crew for their years of quality offerings to the vintage card hobby.


Lyman and Brett Hardeman
Old Cardboard, LLC.

Old Cardboard, LLC. was established in December 2003, to help bring information on vintage baseball card collecting to the hobbyist.  Produced by collectors for collectors, this comprehensive resource consists of three components: (1) Old Cardboard Magazine, (2) a companion website at www.oldcardboard.com and (3) this eNewsletter. The Old Cardboard website contains more than 500 pages of descriptive reference information for baseball card sets produced fifty years ago or longer.  Each of these set summaries has a direct set-specific link to auctions and a similar link to 's powerful search engine for further research.  The website also includes a Show and Auction Calendar, an eBay Top 50 Vintage Sellers List, and much more.  As a result, the Old Cardboard website makes a great "Alt-tab" companion for vintage card shoppers and researchers.  Old Cardboard eNews provides current hobby news, upcoming shows and auctions, and updates to the website and the magazine.  It is published around the middle of each month.  For a FREE subscription to the eNewsletter, or for subscription information on Old Cardboard Magazine, please visit the website at www.oldcardboard.com.  If you find this information resource helpful, please tell your friends.  We need your support and your feedback. Thank you.