Your Information Resource for Vintage Baseball Cards
  eNews Issue #142 (February 2016)       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. Set Profile: 1910-12 Plow Boy Tobacco 3. Latest Additions to the OldCardboard.com Website 4. 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

February 2016
26-28	King of Prussia, PA	Philly Show (see website for details).
28	Phone/Internet	RMY Auctions (see website for details).
March 2016
2	Internet	Clean Sweep $5 Reserve Auction (see website for details).
5	Phone/Internet	Goldin Auctions (see website for details).
6	Internet Only	Wheatland Auction Services (see website for details).
10	Phone/Internet	Sterling Sports Auctions (see website for details).
10	Phone/Internet	Goodwin & Co. Auction (see website for details).
15-17	Phone/Internet	Hake's Americana & Collectibles Auction (incl. baseball; website).
18-20	Chicago	Chicago Sun Times Show (see website for details).
19	Internet	BST Auctions (see website for details).
26	Internet	Brockelman Auctions (see website for details).

2. Set Profile: 1910-12 Plow Boy Tobacco Plow Boy Tobacco, a brand of Spaulding & Merrick Company of Chicago, originally issued this set of cabinet-like cards around 1910. They were distributed in the Chicago area and featured players only from the city's Cubs & White Sox teams. Based on player-team affiliations, a few cards in the set are believed to have been issued in subsequent years. The Plow Boy set is among the rarest of all 20th century tobacco issues. It was apparently not known to collector and early card compiler Jefferson Burdick and is not listed in the American Card Catalog. The Plow Boy cards measure approximately 5-3/4 by 8 inches, the same size as the much better known Turkey Red (T3) cabinets produced during the same period. Unlike the T3's, however, the Spaulding & Merrick cards are printed in black and white on somewhat thinner stock. The sepia player images show full action poses in both vertical and horizontal format. The player's name is printed in the lower right border, and his team affiliation at the lower right. Two different backs are found on the Plow Boy cards (see examples at left). One displays a relative plain Plow Boy Tobacco advertisment. The other back (less common) contains this same heading, but adds a list of prizes that could be obtained by sending in Spaulding & Merrick coupons to the company's Chicago headquarters. Interestingly, the card of Alex Carson can be used "single-handedly" to date the set to 1910. Carson's entire Major League career consisted of two games played for the Cubs that year. It seems clear, however, the set was issued over a period of several years, as Ping Bodie and Bill Jones did not join the Sox until 1911 and Ed Cicotte did not join the Sox until July of the 1912 season. The set checklist today includes 49 cards, unchanged for the past three decades since Lew Lipset first published the Plow Boy checklist in his 1986 Volume 3 of the Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards. It should be noted, however, that cards for seven players (Cole, Howard and Miller of the Cubs and Bodie, Davis, Jones and Tannehill of the White Sox) have not been verified by the hobby in recent years. CAUTION: The Plow Boy set has been reproduced with reprint cards frequently offered on eBay and elsewhere. Most if not all are labeled as such in the lower right corner of the back. Several Plow Boy-related relics from the period that the cards were produced are also occasionally seen on the Internet, including the countertop Plow Boy Tobacco storage bin shown at left and a pocket tobacco pouch at right. A full checklist of Plow Boy cards (both the consolidated two-team list along with a separate list for each team) has been added to the Old Cardboard website. We welcome any feedback from readers to help verify the existance of the eight cards not confirmed in the recent hobby. 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 Checklists have been added for: 1910-12   Plow Boy Tobacco 1910-12   Plow Boy Tobacco (Players by Team) 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, images of cards missing from our galleries, error corrections and suggestions. Please send all feedback 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. N-Cards 1887 N28 Allen & Ginter 1888 N29 Allen & Ginter N162 Goodwin Champions N172 Old Judge N184 Kimballs 1800s BB Trade Cards D-Cards D303/D304 General Baking D305 Bond Bread 1946-50 D317 Remar Bread 1910 D322 Tip Top Bread 1947 D323 Tip Top Bread 1916-21 D350 Standard Biscuit (more custom searches by major card group) 4. News Briefs (A Digest of Recent Hobby Happenings) Debut of "Fastball." Coming to a theater near you beginning March 24, "Fastball" is a documentary that showcases the primal baseball battle between a pitcher and batter, Produced by Thomas Tull (acclaimed producer of the Jackie Robinson movie "42") and narrated by Kevin Costner, "Fastball" includes interviews with HOFers Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan and dozens more. It is peppered with archival footage of baseball's greatest moments plus motion graphics that, according to the films producer Legendary Pictures, unlock the secrets hidden within a ball traveling over 100 mph. A movie trailer can be viewed online. Conlon Photo Archive. More than seventy seven hundred Charles Conlon's baseball photographs can be viewed online in gallery format on the Getty Images website. Many of the images in the archive are familiar to Old Cardboard readers, as the archive includes photos used on many dozens of vintage baseball cards. 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.