Advertising – 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.

1928 Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig H&B Louisville Slugger Bats Advertising Display

November 21, 2024 by John

When Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig appear in the same ad, you know it’s a legendary piece of baseball memorabilia.

REA offered this incredible advertisement in their July 2000 catalog. Here’s the lot’s complete description:

This visually appealing fold over H&B advertising piece was furnished to store owners for window display. The front features a large photo of Ruth and Gehrig examining an H&B Louisville Slugger bat. The interior portion pictures numerous baseball stars endorsing H&B bats as well as an order card for dealers. Unfolded front measures 12″ x 18″ Condition details include separations along the fold lines and tears. An extremely attractive advertising broadside which displays beautifully as is, but would benefit greatly from some minor professional restoration which could easily help return this piece to its original glorious state. This is the only example of this extremely rare advertising piece Robert Edward Auctions has seen to date.

Wikipedia has a great article for Hillerich & Bradsby if you’d like more history about the Louisville Slugger brand.

Prince of Cards – The “Best” Unopened Product You Will Ever See

November 20, 2024 by John

Yesterday, I shared an ad from The Baseball Card Kid, with whom most collectors on the leading unopened FB group had fond memories. This ad from Prince of Cards didn’t precisely elicit identical memories.

The ad is a scan from the June 1996 issue of Sports Card Trader. Here are a few comments from collectors on the Facebook ‘Vintage Wax and Packs’ group after I posed this same ad on September 15th, 2024.

One collector noticed that the 1971 rack was bad since the header hole was wrong, and another group expert commented that the 1969 Aaron/Bench rack was probably bogus, too, showing just how far back people were fabricating this stuff.
Someone noticed that the 1975 mini box at $1,750 was actually higher than the price for one as recently as 2012 or so. And someone commented that they were getting them for around $400 in the early ’90s.
It’s not all bad; one collector said he bought a couple of 1986 Fleer basketball sets from Prince (in the late ’90s), and both Jordan’s graded PSA 8.
A collector remembered the huge find of sealed 61-62 Fleer basketball cases in the late 80s/early 90s.
Another collector recalled buying a 1969 cello pack from this dealer that, when opened, had two wax-stained cards in the middle (circa 1992). Another purchased some 1961 Fleer basketball packs around this time that, when opened a few years later, had 1980s Topps baseball cards in the middle.
A ton of collectors said the packs purchased from this dealer in the early ’90s were bad.

The lesson is to be informed and do as much homework as possible, especially when buying pricey items in the unopened niche.

Mark Murphy The Baseball Card Kid – Unopened Advertising In Late 1993

November 19, 2024 by John

Today, the Baseball Card Exchange is the big player in the unopened space, but in the early ’90s, it was Mark Murphy, The Baseball Card “Kid.” Here’s an ad he placed in the December 1993 issue of Sports Cards Magazine.

You can see along the top that he had just bought a gorgeous run of 1970-1979 Topps Baseball wax boxes and was offering packs from each of them as the first products in the ad. Let’s compare prices in December 1993 to PSA 8-graded wax packs today:

1970 Topps: $200 (5th/6th/7th Series) compared to ~$2000+
1971 Topps: $175 (1st/2nd Series) compared to ~$2000++ (BBCE Auctions recently sold a PSA 8 1st Series pack for $6,667 and 2nd Series packs for $3k)
1972 Topps: $65 (3rd Series) compared to ~$500-750
1973 Topps: $110 (2nd Series) compared to ~$1k
1974 Topps: $60 compared to ~$500
1975 Topps: $90 compared to ~$1k
1976 Topps: $35 compared to $350-425
1977 Topps: $30 compared to ~$225
1978 Topps: $20 compared to ~$150
1979 Topps: $15 compared to ~$115

This ad has so many other awesome products, so I shared the advertisement on the Facebook ‘Vintage Wax and Packs’ group in early September 2024 to see what stood out to people who concentrate on this hobby niche:

Some were surprised by how high some prices were at the time; many thought that everything would have been a lot cheaper in 1993.
One collector commented that the 1982 Topps and 1991 Stadium Club boxes cost the same.
Many commented on how many “bad” decisions one could have made in that ad.
A lot of folks had bought vending boxes from him.
There were many comments about the 1986/87 Fleer basketball packs being $225 or $425 for two.
Many recalled fond memories of dealing with Murphy.

Happy collecting!

A Rare 1937 R342 Goudey Baseball Thum-Movies Window Sign

November 16, 2024 by John

I ran across this window sign advertising the circa 1937 R342 Goudy Thum-Movies in Sotheby’s March 1991 auction catalog, which included The Copeland Collection; it’s a cool-looking sign in black and white, but it’s actually red, white, and blue.

Sotheby’s described the window sign as follows:

Goudey Flip Movie Window Sign, circa 1937, red, white and blue, blank on reverse, thin paper and very delicate, depicting a drawing of a flip movie being flipped and also “gum and pictures only 2 cents” which gives it provenance to the R342 set, near mint to mint. 5⅞ in. by 7⅝ in.

The window sign for the R342 Goudey Flip Movies, were meant to be glued to the window of candy stores. This sign still shows the strips of glue along the edges since it was never used.

Their estimate for the item was $1,000-1,500.

Based on the staple holes and a bit of the paper loss, it looks like Heritage resold the same item in February 2017 for $384.

Heritage highlighted that it was the first time they had the opportunity to present this piece to their bidders and that the item was very fragile.

REA sold the following copy, which originated directly from Goudey’s files, in the spring of 2017 for $360.

They wrote that it still had the original strips of clear glue along the vertical sides, which a candy store was supposed to wet to attach the poster to the window. This one also had two clean staple holes, but the paper loss differs from the Heritage example.

For more information, I previously shared a piece about this set’s cousin; the R326 Goudey Flip Movies set, and Sports Collectors Daily has a nice overview of both Goudey Baseball Movies sets.

1938 O-Pee-Chee Horrors Of War Dealer Advertising Sheet

October 23, 2024 by John

I found this 1938 dealer advertising sheet for the Canadian counterpart of the U.S. Gum, Incorporated 1938 Horrors of War set in Mastro’s 2004 auction catalog.

The ad sheet was part of a “Fascinating and Diverse 1930’s-1960’s Non-Sports Collection” and was described as a “Dealer Advertising Sheet; blue-on-white, no illustrations, measures 16-1/2” x 22” w/ mailing folds; text promotes upcoming HOW issue to retailers (EX/MT).”

I don’t want to dwell on the cards much, perhaps in a future post, but the basics are that while advertised as a series of 240 cards, the Canadian set fell short of O-Pee-Chee’s lofty goals. There ended up being only 72 OPC Horror of War cards, and now, because the print run was so small, the cards are really desirable and pricey.

I want to highlight the lower-left corner of the advertising sheet; you can see a call out to the May 9th, 1938 issue of Life Magazine that highlighted the set. I managed to grab a copy of the magazine off eBay for just $13.45 (including shipping)!