4. Set Profile: 1928 Tharp's Ice Cream
Tharp's Dairy of Shamokin, Pennsylvania distributed this 60 card set to promote its ice cream products in 1928.
The 1-3/8 x 2-1/2 inch cards share the hobby designation F50 with other closely related sets issued by Tharp's nearby competitors Yuengling's and Harrington's ice cream brands, as well as the Sweetman (candy or ice cream?) Company of St. Louis. The set is also very closely related (shares the same checklist, player images, etc.) to the E210 York Caramel set, the W502 strip card set and a very obscure set issued by Greiner's Bread.
The black and white cards include Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb (Cobb's last year in the Majors) and many other top stars of the day. The player images include a variety of poses ranging from full length action photos to waist-up images to a few that show portraits of the players. All images depict the players in uniform.
A redemption message was printed on the card backs. It offered an ice cream bar for each picture of Babe Ruth (see example below). Alternatively, a gallon of ice cream was offered in exchange for the full set of 60 cards.
In 1928, before the introduction of refrigerated delivery trucks, ice cream was kept frozen during delivery by an ice-salt mixture (see image of 1920's Tharp's delivery truck below). Further, refrigerators were only beginning to come into widespread commercial use to provide convenient storage for the product once it reached the dealers.
All of this meant that ice cream was valued somewhat more as a luxury item then than it is today. Consequently, it may have been easier for a Tharp's customer to give up a Ruth card for an ice cream bar than it would be today.
Nevertheless, Wilbur Tharp, the person responsible for the 1928 Tharp's baseball card promotion, would no doubt be astounded (and delighted, according to his son) to learn that today, more than 80 years later, one of his Babe Ruth cards might sell for several thousand dollars. That's a lot of ice cream bars!
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| Above images are (left to right): 1) a delivery truck used by Tharp's to distribute ice cream to its dealers, 2) a circa 1950s menu cover featuring Tharp's ice cream, and 3) Wilbur Tharp, whose idea it was to promote the ice cream using baseball cards. |
Tharp's Ice Cream grew out of a family restaurant business in the early part of the twentieth century. By 1928 when the baseball card set was issued, 24-year-old Wilbur Tharp (1904-1996), son of the founder, was was actively involved in the company's operations. These operations continued under the Tharp's trade name until the 1950's, when the company was absorbed by another dairy. According to Wilbur Tharp's son Bruce, Wilber remembered the 1928 baseball promotion as being highly successful in selling the company's Eskimo Pie ice cream bars.
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As related by Wilbur Tharp many years later, the Babe Ruth card was used as the "chase" card for the set. As such, it was distributed in lower quantities than the other cards, which limited the number of complete sets available for redemption.
This worked, he added, until Yuengling's Ice Cream of nearby Pottsville, Pennsylvania "flooded the market with a plentiful supply of the Ruth card." The Yuengling's set was identical on the card fronts but carried a different redemption message on the reverse. More than once, according to Tharp family lore, its customers would shave the back from another card in the Tharp's set, then affix it to a Ruth front from a similarly shaved Yuengling's card. This produced a Ruth card with a Tharp's back, thereby completing the "Tharp's set" for redemption.
Note: Ruth is known with both a throwing and a portrait pose in the Tharp's set.
A profile for the F50 Tharp's Set is provided on the Old Cardboard website. Similar profiles can also be found for the related Yuengling's, Harrington's, Sweetman, E210 and W502 sets.
5. News Briefs (A Digest of Recent Hobby Happenings)
Abundance of Auctions for December. Despite the sluggish ecomomy, there seems to be no slowdown in auction activity for vintage cards and memorabilia. As indicated in the Auction Calendar above, there are at least nine on-line auctions in December that are focused on vintage baseball cards and memorabilia.
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.
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