The Industry – Post War Cards

Trading Labels for Legends: How the 1954 Red Heart Baseball Set Was Advertised and Distributed

December 20, 2024 by John

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

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.

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

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.

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 4

Kudos to the collector who made a fantastic display with this ad and a quartet of cards.

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

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.

Private Collections Reap Big Sales – A Sports Cards’ Auction Report From 1996

December 20, 2024 by John

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!

Updating the Provenance of the 1915 Cracker Jack Advertising Sheet

December 16, 2024 by John

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.”

A Rare Gem: The 1952 Shelby Bicycles Yogi Berra Promotional Card

December 11, 2024 by John

There are a lot of unique sets in the post-war hobby, but many more exclusive releases exist, not entirely fitting the traditional classification of an oddball set like individual promotional issues. These cards are usually only known by folks who collect specific players but not the rest of the hobby. In this article, I’ll spotlight one such hidden gem: the 1952 Shelby Bicycles Yogi Berra promotional card.

The card itself is 5″ x 7″ and features a black-and-white photo of Berra in a squatting catcher’s pose. Along the bottom, an endorsement in white script reads, “Ride Shelby, The Winner’s Bike, Sincerely, Yogi Berra.” The back is blank.

The following example currently sits in the current #1 Yogi Berra Master Set on the PSA Set Registry

The date of issue on this card is conjecture. The first driver is the familiar photo of Yogi Berra that Shelby used for this card. Robert Edward Auctions sold a circa 1949 Yogi Berra Original New York Yankees (their propriety stamp is on the back of the photo) PSA/DNA Type I image that was used for the Shelby Bicycles promo, his 1950 Bowman card, and his 1950 Drake’s card; it sold for $2880 in August 2023.

Here’s the front and back of the Type I photo.

Yogi Berra New York Yankees Type 1 Photo – Front

Yogi Berra New York Yankees Type 1 Photo – Reverse

And here’s Berra’s 1950 Bowman baseball card.

The second reason the hobby dates the card to around 1952 is from the advertisements featuring Berra promoting Shelby Bicycles. While you will see many of them referenced to 1954 and 1955, Shelby Cycle Company only manufactured bicycles in Shelby, Ohio, from 1925 to 1953 before being purchased by AMD in 1953. One specific advertisement features the Shelby Cycle Company name (and a Shelby, Ohio address) and features an illustration of the offered promotion card. It was free, along with a 16-page catalog, to anyone who requested it.

Shelby Cycle Co. Ad Featuring The 1952 Berra Card

That advertisement, along with three others (AMF moved bicycle production to Cleveland in 1953, which is where Shelby is addressed to in the next three ads) and a PSA 2.5 copy of the 1952 Shelby Bicycles Yogi Berra card, was sold by Robert Edwards Auctions in October 2015 for $1320. The card was part of Al Johnson’s All-Time Finest Yogi Berra Master Set, but that was retired in July 2017, so I suspect he purchased it.

At the time of sale, that PSA 2.5 graded Berra was the only one that PSA or SGC had graded. Its sales history after the initial REA auction and I suspect the retirement of the Master Set, is fascinating.

Heritage Auctions resold the PSA 2.5 for $430.20 in November 2016. They noted that the card has a vertical crease.

Memory Lane Inc. then got its hands on the item in August 2017, but it went unsold with an opening bid of $300. It was still described as the only example ever graded by either PSA or SGC. But today, PSA shows five cards and two autographed cards in their pop report, while SGC shows a single copy.

1952 Shelby Bicycles Yogi Berra – Memory Lane Inc.

Clean Sweep Auctions sold one of those signed PSA-encapsulated cards in February 2022 for $775.20.

1952 Shelby Bicycles Yogi Berra – Clean Sweep Auctions

The 1952 Shelby Bicycles Yogi Berra card is a particularly significant post-war collectible. It’s rare, features a Hall of Fame Yankee, and is directly connected to a classic American company and a post-war classic Bowman set.

Jack Wallin’s 1979 Diamond Greats Baseball Card Set

December 11, 2024 by John

This 1979 Diamond Greats baseball card set advertisement published in the February 1980 issue of The Trader Speaks offers a fascinating look into Jack Wallin’s tribute to baseball’s icons.

First, Jack Wallin, a collector and dealer and later a Donruss photographer, produced the set, not TCMA. He focused the set on autograph collectors since each of the 400 players was living when he printed it, and he included home addresses for all of them. You’ll find a ton of signed examples across eBay and the major auction houses; for example, Leland’s sold a near-complete set of 380 in June 2021 for $4,041.

I presume this is why he printed the 2-1/2” x 3-1/2” black-and-white cards with blank backs; he wanted collectors to focus on player autographs on the front.

The ad shows that the complete set of 400 cards was available for $23.95, each lettered series (A, B, C, and D) was available for $7.50, and team sets were available for $2.50.

The set’s key cards include Joe DiMaggio, Roger Maris, Willie Mays, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Stan Musial, and you can find raw unsigned sets for a few hundred dollars.

While Wallin wrote in the ad that all the players were living at the time of printing, a few died in late 79/early 80, so I’m unsure if a complete signed set is possible.

I’d love to see the original address list, so if you have an example, please e-mail me.

The Rarest Rookie Cards: The 1964 Topps Rookie All-Star Banquet Set

December 3, 2024 by John

In its Summer 1990 issue, Topps Magazine published Kenneth M. Liss’s great article about “The Rarest ‘Rookie Cards.'” PSA has only slabbed 252 cards from this 35-card (ok, 36-card) set!

I want to draw your attention to two things from the article. First, instead of a program in booklet form, in 1964, Topps presented a boxed set of 36 over-sized cards with all the same information. Second, Topps only made 600-700 sets, making them exceedingly rare.

Here’s the original sleeve/box that held the cards.

Leland’s included that box and 35 cards, a handful of which were PSA-8 graded, in their 2018 Invitational auction. The lot sold for $1,886.40.

But what’s really interesting is that it seems Topps pivoted at some point and printed a sample program! Huggins and Scott sold a newly discovered, potentially one-of-a-kind example in August 2023 for $1,740.

They also wrote that only about 300 (or so) invitees attended. The auction believed that after this 1964 program was made, someone at Topps realized they were card manufacturers and that a card set should be made instead of a program. Topps didn’t do much work, as there’s a page number on the lower right-hand corner of each card (see the Page 12 notation on the following example)!

Huggins noted a few differences between this program and the cards:

The thicker card stock versus the thinner paper pages of the program, the cards are blank backed versus the back-to-back printed program pages, and the size. The program is 3/16″ wider than the card set (so, the bigger program was not part of the snugly fitting boxed card set.) We believe the programs were likely deemed redundant and were probably trashed, assuming they even made more than one or two to begin with.

Unfortunately, Topps went back to banquet programs in 1965 and 1966. REA offered a complete run of seven 1959 to 1966 Topps Rookie Banquet Programs in their 2018 Spring auction. They sold for $2,040 then but would command A LOT more today.

1960 Topps World Series Cards’ Original Artwork

December 2, 2024 by John

Ron Oser Enterprises offered a collection of five 1960 Topps World Series Cards’ Original Artworks in their December 2000 auction. A sixth showed up for sale in 2013 before REA re-sold the five from 2000 in the summer of 2020. I’m still hunting for the original artwork for Hodges’ Winning Homer (card 388).

Ron Oser Enterprises described the five pieces in their December 2000 auction as flexichrome artworks that measured approximately 4 x 5 inches, in beautiful condition, and still mounted to the artist’s board. They included an example card with each piece (cards 385, 386, 387, 389, and 391). Only ‘Furillo Breaks Up Game’ (card 387) was pictured in the catalog.

It turns out that REA sold the original artwork, without an example, for another item in the World Series subset, card 390, ‘Scrambling After Ball,’ in their 2013 Fall auction for $593.

Then, REA re-sold the five items Ron Oser offered in their 2020 Summer catalog. The artwork for card 385 (Neal Steals Second) sold for $1,170, 386 (Neal Belts 2nd Homer) for $1,170, 387 (Furillo Breaks Up Game) for $1,170, 389 (Luis Swipes Base) for $1,620, and 391 (The Champs Celebrate) for $1,200.

As I said in the intro, I haven’t been able to find the original artwork for card #388, ‘Hodges’ Winning Homer,’ but here’s a PSA-graded sample. Let me know if you have a lead on the artwork, though!