Thursday, December 10, 2009

1920 W519 strip card #5, Babe Ruth

30 Helens Agree: "It's hard to beat a vintage Babe Ruth card."

This #5 still looks hale and hearty, though a previous owner slimmed it down significantly with some scissors. Fortunately, they left behind the name, number, and the Babe's sly smile. That's enough to catalog it as a W519, part of a 1920 set of 20 strip cards.

W519 card front

This blog already profiled a mirror twin to today's Bambino, the 1921 W521 #5. Both sets probably used the same distribution, as horizontal paper strips sold for a few cents at stores, carnivals, or arcades.

W521 card front

Old Cardboard's profile for W519 notes several design and numbering variations, but the serious collectors at Net54Baseball are still exploring and developing the set's full scope. See a December 8, 2009 thread for discussion, checklist questions, and example scans.

The Babe Ruth Cards site includes scans of several W519s, all slabbed and ready-to-buy. (No connection or endorsement implied.) Of note, the PSA and SGC graders didn't originally distinguish W519-1 and W519-2 varieties, but some recent Net54 scans include that detail.

3 comments:

SpastikMooss said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Wow this card must've costed you a pretty penny. Nice find

Matthew Glidden said...

Agreed, this Ruth cost over $100, even before pre-war stuff shot up to such high levels.

...and psyched to see Kids in the Hall shooting a new series. 30 Helens also agree on that.