2. Featured Set: 1934 Tiger Photos Team Set (Annis Furs)
Uncatalogued in the American Card Catalog, this Detroit Tiger Team Set set depicts players from the 1934 team during the team's prime years of the mid-1930s. Cards for a total of 23 players are found in the set.
The unnumbered cards are postcard size, measuring 3-1/2 by 5-1/2 inches. Each player's name and position is printed in all-caps white lettering--mostly over dark backgrounds at varying places on the card.
All card backs are blank. An example of the Hank Greenberg card from the set is shown here.
All players are shown in uniform. Most are chest-up portrait poses although some are full body action poses.
The sepia-toned cards are cut with very narrow white borders on the sides. Top and bottom borders are much wider with three distinguishing stripes printed across the top. The top stripe is wider than the other two.
A promotional poster that displays the images of all 23 players in the set has been discovered and is shown below, courtesy of vintage type collector Leon Luckey. All player images found in the poster are based on the same photographs used for the card set, although they are cropped differently.
The poster is titled "1934 Fighting Tigers" at the top with the name of the sponsor, "Newton Annis Furs," centered at the bottom. The location and other information about the furrier is also printed along the lower edge of the poster, which measures about 17 by 20 inches.
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Also shown is a 1935 "Following The Tigers" record book (of which Annis Furs was a co-sponsor). The 40-page record book summarizes player and team statistics for the 1934 season. The only player picture in the booklet is that of Mickey Cochrane and it is a different pose than the one in the card set and poster.
Also pictured above is the Annis Furs Building which still stands in Detroit today on the northeast corner of Library Street and East Grand River Avenue (the same location printed on the poster). The building has since, however, been converted into condominiums.
Because of the Annis Furs connection, collectors have often referred to the card set as the 1934 Newton Annis Furs Detroit Team Issue. Recent discoveries, however, indicate otherwise, although it is clear that Annis Furs was a strong supporter of the team during the mid-1930s.
Envelopes have recently surfaced in which cards from the set were distributed. The envelopes are marked "Set No. 1" and "Set No. 2" and make no mention of Annis Furs or any other sponsor. In fact, the "Set No. 2" envelope (right hand image below) has a handwritten notation indicating that the cards were purchased on October 4, 1935 at a local 5 & 10-cent store.
Considering that there are 23 players in the Detroit team set, it is possible that a third envelope was produced. It is more likely, however, that each envelope contained a different set of players at different times over the period of distribution. The cards were apparently produced and sold during the 1934 season (when the Tigers won the AL pennant) and throughout 1935 (when they won the World Series).
It is possible as some have suggested that the envelopes were also sold in the stadium at some of the 1935 Tiger games. Remarkably, the 10-card envelopes sold for 10 cents each, or a penny per card!
Sidenote: Furrier Newton Annis was born in 1858 and moved to Detroit in 1880. By 1887, he had established a wholesale and retail fur manufacturing company. The Annis Fur company moved into the building pictured above around 1932 and was headquartered there until about 1983.
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:
1934 Detroit Tigers Team Set
Set Checklists have been added for:
1934 Detroit Tigers Team Set
Set Galleries have been added for:
1907 PC765-1-1 Dietsche Postcards
1934 Detroit Tigers Team Set
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.
Beyond the above pages recently added 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 eBay listings. Samples of a few of these custom searches are provided below. Hundreds more are provided on the Set Profile pages throughout the Old Cardboard website.
4. News Briefs (A Digest of Recent Hobby Happenings)
Information Request. We are planning a comprehensive article on the 1909-10 D380 Clement Bros. Bread set written by collector Paul Kaufman for the Spring issue of Old Cardboard magazine and would like your input. Please let us know if you can confirm the existence of D380 cards for Bender, Collins or Zimmerman, or have any special knowledge of the set. Your input will be much appreciated by all.
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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 1,000 pages of descriptive reference information about 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 
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