Your Information Resource for Vintage Baseball Cards
eNews Issue #46 (February 2008)      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. Vintage Set Profile: 1928 W565 Strip Cards 3. Latest Updates to the OldCardboard.com Website 4. 1927 "La Imperial" Cuban Postcards Checklist Doubles 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 Show and Auction Calendar on the Old Cardboard website.

OC eNewsletter Sponsor

February 2008
13	Phone/Internet	Mile High Auctions (see website for details).
20	Phone/Internet	Hunt Auctions (see website for details).
27-28	Internet Only	Mastro Classic Collector Auction (see website for details).
2/29-3/2	Reading, PA	Philadelphia Sports Card & Memorabilia Show (see website for details).
March 2008
6	Phone/Internet	Goodwin & Co. Auction (see website for details).
27	Phone/Internet	Collectible Classics Auction (see website for details).

2. Vintage Set Profile: 1928 W565 Strip Cards The strip card set now known in the hobby as W565 follows a playing card theme similar to that used for the better-known W560 cards issued in the same late 1920s timeframe. The W565 cards, however, are somewhat smaller (by a half inch in both directions) and more obscure. Unfortunately, while the W560 set focuses mainly on baseball players, the W565 set does not; it contains only four known ball players in a set believed to contain 100 subjects. Further, the cards are considered by some collectors to be among the most unattractive of all baseball card sets. The W565 cards were apparently not known to Jefferson Burdick, editor of the American Card Catalog, as the set is not listed in the ACC. Instead, the cards acquired their hobby designation years after the last edition of the ACC was published. The W565 cards are unnumbered. A key distinguishing feature is that the card backs are solid navy blue. The four baseball players in the set are: Lou Gehrig, Harry Heilmann, Tony Lazzeri and Al Simmons. While only four, all of these players have since been inducted in to baseball's Hall of Fame. Each is shown here at approximate actual size. W565 -- Complete Baseball Subset Gehrig Heilman Lazzeri Simmons W565 Back The set was apparently originally printed on four 25-card sheets (two printed in black and two in red) totaling 100 cards. To our knowledge, one of the four sheets (a second sheet printed in red) has never been reported or cataloged by the hobby. Logically, two sheets in the set were printed in black ink (for spades and clubs); the others in red (hearts and diamonds). The two sheets known to include baseball players are shown below. Each sheet contains five rows of five cards each and measures about 7 x 10-1/2 inches. The W565 cards were printed on low-grade stock and likely sold in candy and toy stores for about a nickel per sheet. Like other strip card sets, they were cut into individual cards by the purchaser. The non-baseball subjects in the W565 set include movie stars (Gary Cooper, Lon Chaney, Charlie Chaplan), boxers (Young Stribling and Izzi Schwartz), and other celebrities of the period. As seen, one of the cards on the black sheet even depicts the comic character, Ozwald the Lucky Rabbit! Oddly, a few of the cards (the entire bottom row in each sheet, which includes all four of the known baseball players) do not follow the playing card theme. Instead, they display simply the image along with a rectangular block at the bottom to identify the subject. Some collectors have considered these to be jokers or "wild cards" for the set. It should also be noted that a PSA 10 example of a Gehrig card from this set sold last year at a Mile High Card Company auction for Final Bid of $692. According to several collectors that we talked with, that seems like a pretty healthy price, even in today's hot market, considering that many examples from the set are found still in sheet form. As one collector puts it, "it is just a matter of who has the sharpest paper cutter [to extract the cards from an uncut sheet] to get a near perfect card." A W565 set overview can also be accessed on the Old Cardboard website. Remaining Questions for our readers: 1) To our knowledge, the fourth sheet in this set (one of the two red sheets) remains unknown to the hobby. Any information about this sheet is welcome and will be shared with our readers in a future update. 2) Although the cards today are classified in the hobby as set W565, the set is not listed in the ACC. We would appreciate any information about when or how the set acquired this ACC-like classification. Our best guess: the designation was first "created" in an early issue of Krause's Standard Catalog. OC eNewsletter Sponsor 3. Latest Updates to the OldCardboard.com Website We are continually expanding the Old Cardboard website with more set profiles, checklists and set galleries. Recent (past 30-40 days) additions include: Set Profiles have been added or significantly expanded for: 1889   A35   Goodwin "Round" Album Premium Set Checklists have been added for: 1889   A35   Goodwin "Round" Album Premium 1927   Chocolate "La Imperial" Cuban Postcard 1928   W502   "Game Backs" Strip Card Set Set Galleries have been added for: 1889   A35   Goodwin "Round" Album Premium 1927   Chocolate "La Imperial" Cuban Postcard Note: In addition to the above recent additions to the set description pages of the Old Cardboard website, we have expanded the Article Index to include entries for the full 50-issue run of The Old Judge newsletter published by Lew Lipset in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This February update is a significant expansion to the Index launched only last month. The index now contains listings for more than 400 articles. It includes virtually all vintage-baseball-card related articles published in Old Cardboard magazine the monthly Old Cardboard eNewsletter, as well as The Old Judge newsletter. Our plan is to continue to add to the index throughout 2008 and to eventually include facsimile images of many of the articles themselves. We also welcome volunteer help for this very time consuming project. If you would like to consider volunteering, please contact editor@oldcardboard.com. We continue to update the website with checklists and full set galleries for additional vintage issues, so check in often to check out the latest additions. There are now many thousands of card images on the Old Cardboard website and the list continues to grow. We welcome and encourage feedback with checklist additions, card images, error corrections and suggestions. Please send all input to editor@oldcardboard.com. 4. 1927 "La Imperial" Cuban Postcards Checklist Doubles Chocolate "La Imperial" Hornsby-Ruth Cuban Postcard When we recently added a "set" description to the Old Cardboard website for the Chocolate "La Imperial" Cuban postcard featuring Tris Speaker, we were not sure whether the postcard was part of a set or not. Thanks to feedback from Old Cardboard subscriber Paul Stewart, we now know for sure. Paul has provided us a scan of a second known subject for the set, which also confirms that a true "set" of more than one card was produced. Fortunately, Paul's card (see front and back scans at right) features two Hall of Fame players, Roger Hornsby and Babe Ruth. As a result of Stewart's feedback, we have updated the Chocolate "La Imperial" Postcards Set Description page on the website. We have also added Checklist and Gallery pages for the set. 5. News Briefs (A Digest of Recent Hobby Happenings) Two New Shows for vintage card collectors launch their inaugural event this Spring. Both of these mid-America shows are set for mid-April.....The first, scheduled for April 11-13, 2008, is the Ohio Sports Collectors Convention (aka Strongsville 2008) to be held at the Holiday Inn Select in Strongsville, OH. Key promoters/ sponsors of the show are Fusco Auctions and Lelands. According to its planners, the show will include "over 120 tables as well as corporate areas. The main focus of the show is rare and vintage cards, autographs and other memorabilia. See the Strongsville 2008 show website for further details. .....Close on its heels the following weekend is the second of the two new shows--the Premier Collectible and Exhibition (PCCE). Held April 17-20 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, IL, the PCCE is being promoted as "an elite event for serious participants in the evolving collectibles industry." Many exhibitors familiar to vintage card collectors will be set up as exhibitors. They include Mastro, Heritage, Huggins and Scott, Hunt, McAvoy, Memory Lane, Mile High and other auctioneers, as well as PSA, SGC and Beckett grading services. Details can be found on the PCCA website. Beckett Scores First T206 Wagner. In January, Beckett Media announced an astonishing find of more than 550 turn-of-the-century tobacco cards, including an example of the most famous sports card of all--the T206 Honus Wagner. After authenticating and grading every card in the T206 find, they announced in early February that they have partnered with vintage-card specialist Robert Edward Auctions to auction the cards. Additional information about the find and the auction is found on the Beckett website. MLI brokers record sale of 1951 Bowman Mantle. Memory Lane, Inc. recently announced the private sale of a 1951 Bowman card of Mickey Mantle to a collector for $600,000. The card is graded a PSA 10. The sale ranks as the second highest price ever paid for a single sports card. Only the PSA 8 T206 Honus Wagner, which was sold twice last year for over $2 million each time, ranks higher. Half Grades Added. Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), the hobby's first and largest grading company, announced last month that it would be adding "half grades" to its card-grading scale. The move brings PSA's grading increments more in line with other graders. It again raises questions among some collectors who point out that all grading systems are necessarily subjective. That fact, they say, sometimes results in differing opinions about the grade of a card that may be a full grade increment or more apart. If this "half-grade" policy leads to more precise grading standards, then most collectors agree that it would be good for the vintage hobby, where a half-grade difference can sometimes translate to hundreds or even thousands of dollars in card value. See PSA website for more information. 2008 Hold'em Series Begins. Old Cardboard's 2008 Texas Hold'em tourney series started with a bang in late January. A total of 26 vintage baseball card collectors participated in the shootout. Jason Barden (TheKidNYC) was the last player standing, riding into the sunset with the $130 top prize. Jeff Prizner (bicem20) took 2nd place honors and $78. Our own Brett Hardeman (BrettHardemn) walked away with 3rd and $52. A detailed Post-Game Wrap-Up for tourney #1 has been added to the Old Cardboard website along with a Leaderboard update for those who scored points toward the Old Cardboard bonus awards for the 2008 series. Next tourney will be held Tuesday, February 26 at 7:30 Texas time (CST). Complete details for the 2008 Series are provided on the Old Cardboard website. 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.