Back in the 1950s, collecting baseball cards was all the rage with kids, and companies saw this as a perfect opportunity to promote their products, including the Red Heart Dog Food Co. They released a series of 33 stunning post-war baseball cards in 1954 featuring some of the biggest names in the game, spread across three sets with blue, green, and red backgrounds. To get your hands on each group of these coveted cards, you only had to send in two Red Heart labels, 10 cents, and a coupon for each item to Red Heart Baseball Pictures in Chicago, Illinois.
1954 Red Heart Dog Food Label Featuring Baseball Player Pictures Offer
Red Heart’s baseball card offer was heavily advertised in Sunday newspaper comic sections in 1954. Some collectors even claimed to have received cards from the company as late as the early 1970s, although the coupons showed an expiration date of January 1st, 1955.
Red Heart used at least four different advertisements to promote its mail-in offer for baseball cards. We don’t have any documentation on how to label them, so I’ll refer to them as Ad Format 1, 2, 3, and 4.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 1
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 1
All four ads had essentially the same information, just formatted into different sizes and locations on the page. This format was unique because it also shared Red Heart’s offers for baseball caps, t-shirts, autographed baseballs, pennants, identification bracelets, charm bracelets, and cards.
Huggins and Scott auctioned off a Red Heart Order Sheet, offering a head scarf and pen and pencil set as well. It sold for $190 in December 2012.
1954 Red Heart Order Sheet – Side 1
1954 Red Heart Order Sheet – Side 2
The following comic page, which features the ad, is from the Washington D.C. Evening Star, June 20th, 1954.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 1 On Comic Page
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 2
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 2
Ad format two is cool because it lists all the players from each series. Maybe this is why the red-backed cards are a little scarcer today. You can see that the same information is organized differently in the space. I’ve found a pair of these formats that probably had different colorings based on the newspaper printer.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 2
This full comic page featuring the ad is from the Washington D.C. Evening Star from April 18th, 1954, the earliest ad I found for the set.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 2 On Comic Page
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 3
Ad format three also organized the same information a little differently. However, the images on the cards are a little more cartoony compared to format 2. Also, you’ve got to give Red Heart credit for securing rights to Stan Musial; Topps and Bowman couldn’t. The color ad is from a May 1954 San Francisco Chronicle.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 3
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 4
Kudos to the collector who made a fantastic display with this ad and a quartet of cards.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 4
The two full-page comic ads are also from the Washington Evening Star; both were published in May.
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 4 On Comic Page
1954 Red Heart Baseball Card Advertisement Format 4 On Comic Page
Another item Red Heart used to drum up sales of its Dog Food via the Baseball Player Pictures was an advertising poster. This one features Stan Musial, Al Rosen, Hank Sauer, and Mickey Mantle and includes an original order blank taped to the front. Leland’s sold it for $477 in December 2013.
1954 Red Heart Dog Food Baseball Card Advertising Poster
To sum up, the ads that Red Heart used to promote their 1954 baseball cards (and dog food) were eye-catching and likely successful, as evidenced by the almost 12000 PSA-graded cards that exist today. The company’s marketing team showed creativity and innovation by using different ad formats in Sunday newspaper comics. If you happen to have a 1954 Red Heart Baseball set, adding a newspaper ad to your collection would be a great way to complete it! And it’s worth noting that Red Heart Dog Food Co. still exists today under Smithfield Foods, Inc.
Sports Cards Magazine & Price Guide had a great feature in the mid-’90s, providing “a wrapup of some of the country’s largest sports auctions.” This one from September 1996 was chockful of incredible items.
Larson highlighted the John F. Kennedy signed ball as the highlight of Mastro’s auction that topped $850,000 in sales. But I wanted to compare two of the cards to today’s prices. The PSA 8 graded 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle sold for $24,394; today, that’s probably a $1M card. And the PSA 8 1914 Crack Jack Joe Jackson, well, Heritage sold one nine years ago for $101k.
As for the rest of the article, half of that stuff won’t show up for sale again, but if any of it does, you can bet on it being a lot pricier!
In the summer of 1965, Shea Stadium was buzzing with excitement as nearly 40k fans gathered to celebrate baseball legend Casey Stengel’s 75th birthday. Dugan Brothers, a New York area bakery, even created a baseball card to commemorate the event. Unfortunately, Stengel wasn’t there; he found himself grappling with a broken hip that morning that ended his managerial career.
The Society For American Baseball Research wrote an excellent piece explaining Stengel’s unexpected goodbye, but here’s the 101. On July 24, 1965, 36,921 fans visited Shea Stadium for a doubleheader that also included a two-inning Old-Timers Day game between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. But the second game of the doubleheader would become historic as Stengel’s last, a 5-1 Mets loss to the Phillies.
After the loss, Stengel joined a few friends who were back in town, some for the old-timers’ celebration, at Toots Shor’s restaurant. After the early morning departure, Stengel went to the home of Mets comptroller Joe DiGregorio, where, ten years later, we learned he had fallen in the bathroom and broke his hip. He went to the hospital the morning of July 25, where he remained for almost a month, after which he confirmed his retirement, which the Mets made publicly official on August 30.
Now, back to the planned July 25 event. Stengel’s birthday was July 30, but the 25th was probably chosen since the Mets were about to go on the road for games against Chicago and Philadelphia from July 28 through August 1. The planned party included a cake from Dugan Brothers, a New York Area bakery known for their drivers (The Dugan Man) who would deliver items to your home until they went out of business in 1967.
Dugan Bros. Truck
The company also made a one-off card to celebrate Stengel. It’s one of the tougher-to-find 1960s cards.
1965 Dugan Bros. Casey Stengel – Front
1965 Dugan Bros. Casey Stengel – Reverse
The 2-1/2″ x 3-1/2″ card was given to each fan in attendance. The front features Stengel in a Mets uniform, while the back has basic biographical information.
PSA has graded a few examples, a PSA 2 and a PSA 3, along with one PSA/DNA copy. SGC has a single 1965 Dugan Bros. Stengel in their pop report, a 5.5. Pricing varies; a slabbed signed copy from Beckett sold on eBay in November 2024 for $659.99; the PSA 2 pictured above has also been on eBay for a while with a $249.99 (or Best Offer) price; it was recently discounted to $199.99. Brockelman Auctions sold the following raw example for $222.75 in February 2021, but you can probably pick up a raw copy for between $50-100 with a bit of patience.
1965 Dugan Bros. Casey Stengel
Now, to finish the story. The Mets still said farewell to Stengel at Shea Stadium on September 2, 1965. Here’s an original 7.5″ x 10″ photo of the event showing Stengel walking across the field with a cane.
Casey Stengel Says Farewell To Shea Stadium
The Mets finished the 1965 season with a dismal 50-112 record, but the Mets retired Stengel’s #37 before the season was over, and the Yankees followed suit, making Stengel the first person to have his number retired by both teams!
How about this for some amazing auction history: A group of eight uncut 1933 Goudey proof sheets from The Official 13th Annual National Sports Collectors Convention Auction, July 8-10, 1992.
Here’s the lot’s description, courtesy of Superior Galleries:
1933 Goudey Proof Sheets. This lot contains eight uncut proof sheets. When cards are printed in color, the printer checks each color process to make sure the presses are working properly and the colors are coming out as desired. This procedure has resulted in the color process such as the Goudey color process sheets. These sheets were not meant to be cut up and distributed-their purpose was to help the printer ensure that all was correct before full production be-gan. These are truly the first cards produced for the issue and are “proofs” in the true sense of the word, as they are meant to be ‘proofread.’
There are exactly two groups of complete Goudey proof processes known and this is one. Two different complete groups of eight process sheets, plus two process sheets of a third group of 24 Goudeys, which since had been cut up for individual sale. Notes from the original Goudey file indicate they were removed in 1943. The punch holes on the left side of each sheet were put there by the printer for the purpose of binding the sheets together with the aim to create a “book” of color proof processes. The same binding process, such as this or staples, is a common practice so the proof processor can keep the sheets neat and orderly for future reference, and separate from other printing jobs.
These sheets were originally taken from the Goudey Company in 1943 and were later discovered in the early 1970g. These are perhaps the most historic and unique uncut sheets ever to be offered for sale. The sheets have been framed and matted. Overall condition is Excellent to Mint.
A couple of older hobby periodicals have so much alpha that I recommend completing the back issue runs to everyone. One example is Topps Magazine; sure, it had a lot of self-advertising, but it also had great pieces like this one about Topps’ Non-NFL sets.
How many of you have all 14 Topps AFL, CFL, and USFL sets Dwight Chapin mentioned in this article?
Now, let’s see how pricey some of the cards mentioned in this Fall 1993 article are today (Near Mint 1993 prices compared to recent PSA sales).
1958 Topps Cookie Gilchrist: $22/$151 PSA 6 in October 2020
1961 Topps Joe Kapp: $20/$109 PSA 8 January 2024
1961 Topps Jack Kemp: $110/$221 PSA 9 June 2020
1964 Topps Checklist #176: $125/$1,480 PSA 9 in May 2024
1965 Topps Joe Namath: $1,250/$36,400 PSA 8 in May 2024
1966 Topps Funny Ring Checklist: $325/$4,446 PSA 8 in September 2023
1984 Topps USFL Jim Kelly: $185/$91 PSA 8 in October 2024
It was a big-time hobby event in the spring of 2009 when REA sold the nicer of the two known 1915 E145 Crack Jack Advertising Posters for $152,750. The lot’s description said it had never been sold before at auction, but Goober’s seems to have offered it in their September 1991 catalog.
Here are the photos of the sheet when REA offered it in 2009; it’s definitely the same item Goober’s offered.
The discrepancy comes in the fourth paragraph of the auction’s description:
There is very little pricing history on the 1915 Cracker Jack Poster due to its extreme rarity, and no sales ever at auction. In years past, Robert Edward Auctions has handled the private sales of both 1915 Cracker Jack posters known to exist. The restored example appeared as Lot 2 in Robert Edward Auctions’ September 1994 auction, but due to the restoration on that example, it failed to receive the minimum bid of $25,000. It was sold privately immediately following the close of the auction for an offer of $20,000. The poster offered here was long ago personally owned by REA president Robert Lifson. He purchased it from Herman Kaufman, one of the hobby’s great and most knowledgeable longtime collectors and dealers, in the mid-1980s for the then princely sum of $8,000. At the time, $8,000 could buy a T206 Wagner. Herman Kaufman had just purchased it days earlier at a lower level from another hobby legend, Josh Evans. In retrospect, all of them knew it was a great item but none of them realized the magnitude of the piece. This was unchartered territory in terms of quality and rarity, and these sales occurred long before the Internet, full-color baseball memorabilia auction catalogs, or the explosion in values that occurred over the next few years. In 1989 Lifson was offered $35,000 to sell the Cracker Jack poster in a direct sale, an offer which he accepted. At the time, $35,000 was more than the value of an entire high-grade Cracker Jack set or a T206 Wagner. The buyer has had it hanging on his wall ever since. After twenty years he has decided it is time to allow someone else the opportunity to enjoy it, and has consigned it to this auction. He’s asked us what we think its worth, and we just can’t tell him. We didn’t know the true value of the Cracker Jack poster in the 1980s, and we still don’t know how to value this piece twenty years later. After this auction, we’ll know!
It is possible that the person who bought the sheet for $35k in 1989 tried to sell it via Goober’s, but the sale fell through, a buyer’s premium wasn’t met, or that REA missed this part of the advertising sheet’s history, I have no idea.
Also, in August 2017, Heritage tried to sell the slightly refurbished poster, but the item’s page says “not sold.”
Andy Malycky is a renowned Canadian football card-collecting authority who has literally written the book(s) on them. He describes the 1954 Blue Ribbon Tea CFL cards as “the jewel in the crown of Canadian football vintage trading cards.” While it seems the hobby has established that they weren’t actually issued with tea but rather with milk chocolate candy bars, I don’t want to dwell on that detail. Instead, I want to emphasize what a fantastic set it is, one that, unfortunately, many collectors don’t know much about.
1954 Blue Ribbon CFL Set Overview
The 80-card Blue Ribbon team features start players from six Canadian Football League teams – the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Ottawa Roughriders, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Edmonton Eskimos, Calgary Stampeders, and Montreal Alouettes. However, there were nine teams at the time. No one is quite sure why the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Toronto Argonauts were omitted, but the British Columbia Lions might have been excluded since they were an expansion team.
Anywho, each 2 1/4″ x 4″ card includes a posed player photo printed within a white border. It’s the first CFL set to be printed in color. Each card was a four-color colorized version of a black and white photo supplied to Blue Ribbon directly from the teams. So Malycky surmises that it’s possible the excluded teams didn’t supply any photos, and that’s why Blue Ribbon didn’t include them.
1954 Blue Ribbon #58 Tom Miner
The backs had black text on grey stock and included the card number along with the player’s name, position, team, a bilingual bio, and a mail-in offer for what is now a scarce and pricey album that I’ll discuss in a bit.
The set is generally the most expensive of all the major CFL sets, particularly in nice condition. It owes a lot of its popularity to the fact that a lot of great American collegiate greats played in Canadian leagues at the time since they paid more than the NFL teams did.
The set included 20 cards from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, presumably because Blue Ribbon was headquartered there. Malycky said the cards were more available in Winnipeg and Toronto (which is where Colorgraphic printed the cards).
PSA has only graded 531 cards across the entire set, with the typical card returning as a four or five. SGC has only graded 38 examples.
1954 Blue Ribbon CFL Set Distribution
Again, I don’t want to dwell on the set’s name, but it’s become widely acknowledged that these cards have been mistakenly associated with Blue Ribbon tea. In his book, Malycky notes that research and interviews with folks who acquired the cards as kids have established that the set was actually issued inside Blue Ribbon Milk Chocolate candy bars.
Blue Ribbon Milk Chocolate Wrapper
Now, I don’t have access to these interview notes, and rather than focusing the article trying to convince PSA (the most recent SGC slabs just say “1954 Blue Ribbon”) to re-label a bunch of cards, I think I’ll move on to sharing the set’s key cards.
1954 Blue Ribbon CFL Key Cards
1954 Blue Ribbon #1 Jack Jacobs
1954 Blue Ribbon #1 Jack Jacobs
As a charter member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1962, Jack Jacobs is fittingly the first card in the set. He was a phenomenal all-around player at the University of Oklahoma, where he was the starting QB and punter. He was then drafted in the 2nd round of the 1942 NFL draft. Jacobs is credited as one of the key figures in making the forward pass a big part of pro football, so it’s fitting that the back of his card shares that he “owns every passing record in the west.”
1954 Blue Ribbon #7 Harry (Bud) Grant
1954 Blue Ribbon #7 Harry (Bud) Grant
Today, Grant is most known for being the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings for 18 seasons, but he’s also a member of the Canadian Football and Pro Football Hall of Fame. Plus, Grant has an awesome card in the 1950 Lakers Scott’s set – his play with the Lakers is mentioned on the back of the Blue Ribbon card.
1954 Blue Ribbon #47 Bernie Faloney
1954 Blue Ribbon #47 Bernie Faloney
Faloney was an outstanding scrambling QB considered one of the CFL’s Top 50 players of the modern era. He was drafted by the 49ers and offered a $9k contract, but the Edmonton Eskimos offered him $12.5k – plus the Canadian dollar was worth 10% more than the USD at the time. He was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1974.
1954 Blue Ribbon #48 Jack Parker
1954 Blue Ribbon #48 Jack Parker
Parker was another great all-around player who finished his college career at Mississippi State. He was drafted by both the New York Giants and Edmonton Eskimos, and despite the Giants offering more money, he decided to play for the Eskimos because his former QB coach had become the Eskimos head coach. Parker was a great runner and a strong QB, and he played solid defense as well.
1954 Blue Ribbon #51 John Bright
1954 Blue Ribbon #51 John Bright
Bright is a Canadian and College Football Hall of Famer. He played college ball at Drake before being drafted by the Eagles. However, he decided to play for Calgary because he didn’t know how he would have been treated as the Eagle’s first black player. Bright was a great RB who was the CFL’s all-time leading rusher when he retired.
1954 Blue Ribbon #68 Sam Etcheverry
1954 Blue Ribbon #68 Sam Etcheverry
Etcheverry was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1969 after leading the CFL in passing from’ 54-’59. He famously threw for 586 yards in a game in 1954 – that record stood for 39 years!
1954 Blue Ribbon Photograph Album
The back of the cards called for folks to “Collect Picture Cards OF OUR FINE CANADIAN FOOTBALL PLAYERS” and to “Mount them in Our Blue Ribbon PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM.” It was available for 25 cents.
The album is incredibly scarce today. Classic Auctions offered the following example for sale in June 2011, along with a complete set of 80 cards; it sold for $5825.63. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to track down any sales of an album on its own, but I think they’d be valued between $500 and $600.
1954 Blue Ribbon Album – Front Cover
1954 Blue Ribbon Album – Inner Pages
1954 Blue Ribbon Album – Back Cover
1954 Blue Ribbon Original Photographs
I don’t think any of the original photos that the teams sent to Blue Ribbon to colorize for the set have emerged, but a few team issue sets have been written about that share pictures that were the basis for the Blue Ribbon set, including the 1954 Stampeders Team Issue Action set, the Mid-1950’s Eskimos Team Issue Action set, the Mid-1950’s Tiger-Cats Aggus set, and the Mid-1950’s Alouettes Birmingham Portrait and Action sets. All of these photos are extremely rare, and I suppose if any came up for auction, they’d cost a small fortune to acquire.
1954 Blue Ribbon Significant Sales
Just because I said the set is a little under-appreciated and unknown doesn’t mean the cards are cheap. There aren’t a lot of graded copies, and as the crown jewel of CFL cards, demand from those targeting the set can be a little intense. Heritage sold both the PSA 5 Bud Grant pictured above in July 2014 for $621 and the pictured PSA 8 Jack Jacobs for $690 in January 2022.
I already shared that Classic Auctions sold a complete set for $5825.63 in 2011; well, a year earlier, in May 2010, REA sold a complete set with an album for $3818.75.
1954 Blue Ribbon Set Examples – REA May 2010
1954 Blue Ribbon Set Examples – REA May 2010
1954 Blue Ribbon Album – REA May 2010
More recently, in August 2021, REA sold a near-complete set of 72/80 cards for $4680. Years earlier, in November 2005, Lelands sold a high-grade near-set of 59 cards for $4571.
PWCC sold a complete set for $3383 in January 2019, described as mostly being in Vg-Ex to ExMt conditions with a few lower.
1954 Blue Ribbon Set Graded Examples – PWCC January 2019
In November 2023, the following complete set was available on eBay, in Pr to Ex-Mt condition, for ~$5000.
1954 Blue Ribbon Set – ebay
Conclusion
I think the 1954 Blue Ribbon Milk Chocolate set is incredible, and I’ll be watching for complete sets and copies of the Jacobs and Grant cards, in particular, for my collection. If you’re interested in learning more about the 1954 Blue Ribbon CFL set or any other Canadian Football collectible, pick up the two volumes of Andy Malycky’s Collecting Canadian Football books.
