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Using Little Cards to Sell Big Books – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
During my five-year tenure as host of SABR’s podcast, my guests included a large number of authors, and at least three of their books were promoted with pocket-sized cardboard objects that look a lot like baseball cards. The books: Intentional Balk (Dan Levitt & Mark Armour)The Captain and Me (Ron Blomberg and Dan Epstein)Split Season:…
The Name on the Card. – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Many people share names with popular athletes. This creates a special connection with certain players and their cards. A quick Facebook search brings up a hundred or more "Steve Trout's", another hundred "Steven Trout's", and an endless multitude of “Stephens", "Stefs", and "Troutmans", etc. The Trading Card Database lists Steve Trout, who's MLB career spanned…
The Black Tomahawk – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
As a collector of throwback uniform cards, I spend a decent amount of my collecting time scouring random cards for odd uniform details. While researching a different Martin Prado photo, I saw this image with a sliver of black tomahawk peeking above the bat. Upon further inspection, I noticed the Indian head logo on the…
This card was a steal! – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
My goals for 2025 included adding to my rather modest collections of Manny Mota and Maury Wills cards. Among other things, the quest has already netted me my very first Colt .45s card, the 1963 Topps Manny Mota. Having already completed my Manny Mota Topps run, the fun now is in deciding which oddball and…
Hometown Heroes – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Getting to play for the team you grew up rooting for was a dream come true for many big league stars. Some spent the majority of their careers with that one team, while others only made brief stints. Either way, there are some great cards of them that I’d like to bring attention to. Here…
Morning Puzzles for Card Collectors – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Author's note: Our Wordpress template no longer (consistently) supports the centering of images. Apologies in advance for the wonky formatting of this article. If you're like me, your social media feeds are filled with friends posting their results from Immaculate Grid, Wordle, Connections, and various other ritualistic morning escapes. To this point, however, I have…
Complete Stat Cards – Intro/Don Aase Profile – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Hello fellow SABR baseball card fanatics and welcome to my first attempt at a blog series where I profile baseball players and cards where there complete stats are on the back of a pro baseball card. These profiles will look at cards that were one year following the last year of a pro player's career…
They’re Coming For Your Baseball Cards! – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
There are culprits destroying our baseball cards. The perpetrators are at it right now, working hard. They never give up and tomorrow they’ll work even harder. They won’t stop until each and every card we now own, or will ever buy, are all gone. They aren’t just after our cards. They’re working on our ticket…
Call for Nominations – 2025 Jefferson Burdick Award – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Through February 28, the SABR Baseball Cards Research Committee is accepting nominations for the Jefferson Burdick Award for Contributions to the Hobby. NOMINATION CRITERIA Nominations should come from active SABR members (click here to join) and honor a living person who has made significant contributions to the hobby of baseball card collecting in such areas…
Topps’ Women in Baseball: Cubs Coach Rachel Folden – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
At the Chicago Cubs’ annual stockholders meeting in December 1926, the board of directors passed a resolution that officially changed the name of their home ballpark from Cubs Park to Wrigley Field, gave first-year skipper Joe McCarthy a vote of confidence, and promoted corporate secretary John Seys to a newly-created second vice president position. Margaret…
The Confectionery Keystone, part 2 – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Previously we saw how events and resources came together to make Southeastern Pennsylvania the birthplace of candy and gum cards. But who were the people and companies behind the scenes, those who gave us our cardboard treasures? At the end of the Civil War, Henry Wilbur owned a stove and hardware business in Vineland, NJ.…
The Confectionery Keystone, part 1 – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Almost every historical discussion about baseball cards feeds the impression that, since baseball was such a wildly popular game after the American Civil War, some enterprising businessmen, most notably James Buchanan Duke, thought it would be a brilliant idea to start putting cards with pictures of baseball players in cigarette packs to sell more tobacco.…
SABR Virtual: John Racanelli and Brian Kappel, “From Design to Legacy: 1949 Leaf Baseball Cards” – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9C-OsmmPRk SABR's Baseball Cards Committee held a virtual Zoom meeting on Monday, January 13, 2025. From Design to Legacy: The 1949 Leaf Baseball Cards Author Brian Kappel and SABR historian John Racanelli will delve into the 1949 Leaf baseball card set's unique production story, its iconic cards (Jackie, Babe, Satchel, etc.) and lasting impact on…
My Favorite Set, 2006 Topps – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
We all have our favorite baseball card sets from when we started collecting. In some cases, the appeal was a set's unique design. Other times, the allure might have been chasing its top rookies. Nostalgia is the greatest factor in this, I’d say. When you were a kid and had little to no responsibility, ripping…
Twin Pair o’ Docs? – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Author's note: I can't be the only one celebrating the 40th anniversary of the classic 1985 Donruss set, can I? Well anyways, if you enjoyed the last one, here's another one for you! Friends and readers know what a huge fan I was of the 660-card 1985 Donruss set, and a good 95% of my…
Big Time Stuff – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
As I slowly rework the collection, with the goal of only having complete sets, I made a big decision in 2024 – forsake my 1933 Tattoo Orbit build and sell what I had. This was a huge step for me, but a clear one. Though I had 41/60, I didn’t have Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove,…
The uneven handling by Topps of a team’s name – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
The Houston Astros began play as the Colt .45s in 1962. The name came from “the gun that won the West,” a bit of a dubious distinction even then. While Topps showed most players with “.45s” on the hats in 1963 and ’64, the cards called them “Colts” in 1962 and 1964. Topps also didn’t…
Cardboard Crosswalk: 1985 Donruss and Leaf – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
The bell rings. High off the thrill of escaping Miss O'Brien's English class without being called on, I head to the basketball court where my buddy—we'll call him "Rambis"—out-rebounds the playground 40-0, half on his own missed layups, and I shoot one for six with double-digit turnovers. As the occasion always does, this calls for…
1992 Cubs Old Style Nostalgia Baseball Cards and a Sweet Sartorial Surprise – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Over 30,000 fans attended the Cubs-Giants game at Wrigley Field on Friday, August 28, 1992. The first 20,000 fans, aged 21 or older, were handed a shrink-wrapped set of baseball cards as they entered the historic ballpark. This “Nostalgia Baseball Cards” giveaway sponsored by Old Style Beer featured 28 players from Cubs history using sepia-toned…
MLB and NFL Cardboard Crossovers – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
The 2024 NFL season is nearing its end, while a flurry of exciting moves has happened this MLB offseason. The two-sport athlete is not uncommon in the collegiate ranks, and we have even seen a phenomenal two-way player, Colorado’s Travis Hunter, win this year’s Heisman Trophy. Shohei Ohtani will likely pitch in a Dodgers uniform…
Playing with the Void – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
I was talking to my friend just a little while ago about this void, this sense of meaninglessness and emptiness that he feels in his life. People fill it with drugs, sex, television, pills, control, power - you name it. And he’s been in the process of slowly but steadily removing these things from his…
Debunking the Myth of 1948 Leaf: How a Recently Unearthed Lawsuit Proves the Case – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Rosa and Josefa Blazek were violin-playing conjoined twins from the Czech Republic who toured the United States in the 1920s. Rosa’s 11-year-old son, Franz Blazek, was featured prominently in advertisements used to promote the twins’ performances. Feeling exploited and embarrassed by the oft-used tagline “son of two mothers,” a lawsuit was filed in Cook County,…
The first baseball card Easter egg? – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
These days, Easter eggs on baseball cards have become rather commonplace, even apart from literal ones. Here is actor/comedian Kevin Hart on a 2024 Topps Trea Turner parallel, for example. A famous Easter egg now nearly (hard to believe!) two decades old is the 2007 Topps Derek Jeter variation that features Mickey Mantle in the…
Alternatives to “True” Rookie Cards – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
When collecting vintage, it's not always easy to buy rookie cards of the best to ever play the game. Whether due to condition or price, many of these iconic cards often elude us. There are alternatives, for sure. For me, I often like to pick up second year cards, or ones with that player's most…
Bowman’s Knockdown Pitch: Leaf Us Alone – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Rosa and Josefa Blazek were violin-playing conjoined twins from the Czech Republic who toured the United States in the 1920s. Rosa’s 11-year-old son, Franz Blazek, was featured prominently in advertisements used to promote the twins’ performances. Feeling exploited and embarrassed by the oft-used tagline “son of two mothers,” a lawsuit was filed in Cook County,…
Bubble Gum Bozos – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
When I was a kid in the late 1980s I loved Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo’s Baseball Hall of Shame books. They weren’t the only baseball books I read but something about the stories of “so bad that they’re silly” events were exactly the kind of thing I liked best about the game. That the…
For the love of the strip card – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Strip cards are a necessary reduction of the baseball card to the essential figuration of what makes a baseball card a baseball card at the psychological, social, cultural, and metaphysical root. It is the imbuement of symbolic significance and meaning into the lowest of the low, the scrap of paper ruefully cut from a long…
Gary Cieradkowski’s Decades Long Quest to Learn What Happened to the Chicago Black Sox Players After the Scandal Results in His Latest Artistic Masterpiece – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Baseball illustrator and storyteller Gary Cieradkowski stays very busy in his studio researching, drawing, and writing about the colorful lives of baseball outsiders. Photo by Russ Speiller Editor's Note: This interview was first published in volume 4 of Turnstyle: The SABR Journal of Baseball Arts, the official publication of SABR's Baseball and the Arts Committee.…
An Essay: What is the Meaning of Baseball Cards? – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
This essay regards the meaning of the American baseball card - a pastime for children, adults; people of all ages and walks of life. It is a pastime specifically American; spanning a period of time just over a century - a period of the birth and flowering of a sport that has captured the imagination,…
The Leaf HOF rookie cards that aren’t anymore – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
In his new book, RE:LEAF, Brian Kappel definitively puts to rest any lingering notion that the 1949 Leaf set was a 1948 (or even 1948-49) issue. Brian's evidence? Court documents in which Marshall Leaf asserts that the very first shipment of Leaf baseball cards left Chicago for Boston on March 14, 1949. Though PSA and…
My Favorite Common – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
It was sometime in the Fall of 2020, when someone on twitter posted a photo of their “Rainbow,” (a completed run of base and short printed cards, all of the same player, brand, and year) of 2020 Topps Series 1 Travis Demeritte #57. Seeing the image, I remembered that I had one of those and…
The Road to Completing a Vintage Set is Filled with Choices and Compromises – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
I have recently finished compiling a complete set of 1973 Topps baseball cards. And after 25 years I am 23 cards shy of a complete set of 1961 Topps baseball cards. Outlined below are some of the key choices and compromises collectors will face when trying to put together a complete set of vintage baseball…
Ángel Scull and My Road Back to Collecting – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
“I don’t collect cards,” I said. Repeatedly. The last new packs I ripped were in 1993. In 1994 I got my first guitar and, well, priorities shifted. The pandemic drew a lot of people back into the hobby, but not me. That said, I enjoyed seeing the cards you were all posting on social media.…
My Personal Collection So Far – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
I grew up collecting Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer and other brands. I got out of the hobby in high school, and stopped following sports almost entirely while in college. Like many, I got back into cards during the pandemic. Most of what I already owned was from the mid to late 2000s. The last set…
Stamping Out an Old Set – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Lately I’ve been grasping about what to collect. I have some big goals – 1958, 1962, and 1963 Topps complete sets - but those require the perfect timing: some selling from my collection, a good deal on the sets in the right condition, and both things occurring at the same time (or close enough). I’m…
Bob Laughlin’s earliest sets – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
My first exposure to Bob Laughlin's fantastic artwork came from opening packs of Fleer Baseball Stickers as a kid in 1980. While the product name referred to the various team stickers on the front of each card... The real fun came from the World Series cartoons and captions on the backs of the cards. It…
My Grading Experience, Part 2 – PSA 3 (very good) – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
I hate grading for the same reasons everyone who hates grading hates grading: it’s expensive, it’s arbitrary, it’s disappointing. Graded cards don’t fit in binders, graded cards make it hard to finish sets. You get it. If I get pushed into buying graded cards, I usually bust them out of their cases, but sometimes I…
Daniel Jacob Horine Tells Baseball Stories Through the Lens of Nostalgic Comic Book Art – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Throughout human history, people have combined elements and ideas that individually are already quite good, but in combination truly lead to greatness. The combination of chocolate and peanut butter into the delectable Reese’s cup. The melding together of circus with theater to create the incomparable spectacles of Cirque du Soleil shows. In 2020, while grappling…
Mordecai Brown: Grumpy Old Man – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
The Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and New York Yankees held a joint event on June 26, 1944 at the Polo Grounds where a “Tri-Cornered Baseball Game” was played in which each club had six innings at the plate and six half-innings in the field. The Dodgers won the contest 5-1-0 over the Yankees and…
Behind the Scenes of “The Diamond King” – SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee
Those who attended the SABR 52 convention in Minneapolis, MN were treated to a screening of the exquisite feature length documentary entitled The Diamond King. The film depicts the history of baseball as told through the life and works of baseball’s Picasso, Dick Perez. Mr. Perez should need no introduction, certainly not to people of…