2016 National Show Report, Aug 4 - 7, Atlantic City

This is my wrap-up for the 2016 National and what I brought back with me. It's not all in the binders yet, but some things take time.

Girlfriend: "That's kind of a lot of cards."

This National exceeded my somewhat low expectations for Atlantic City as a venue, providing both lots of vintage material to review and quite a few friends from OldBaseball.com to hang out with. Back in 2008, mired in a poor economy, AC's last National felt hollow. Suffering from reduced walk-up visitors and limited live events, its cathedral-like convention center often felt more like a dealer-to-dealer social club. This time, a wider spread of fans and sellers made the trip from all points of the map and kicked up the experience several notches. It's not quite as good as Chicago, which remains the easiest show for most of the hobby to reach, but enough about logistics, let's play ball.

"Get ready to walk." - Bill Freehan

Before the show, I wrote about my 5 goals for Atlantic City. Other than log over 12,000 steps per day, how'd I do?

1. Cut my 1954 Red Heart list in half

Take Billy Pierce off my list

So-so on this, hitting my list just three times. Red Hearts were findable on the floor, but rarely in low-grade. Red Heart's one of those sets whose in-hand attractiveness seems to keep show pricing higher than eBay. Still need eight for this one.

2. Finish upgrading my 1958 Topps set to VG

Thanks to a mix of friends and table finds, I knocked this set to one, #320 Whitey Ford, and plucked a VGEX off eBay for $10 soon after. Call this goal "achieved."

3. Fill out my 1930s non-sports sets

Limited luck finding anything for low grade prices ($2-3) except Indian Gum and a couple of Sky Birds, so hoping for better next year. You can always find non-sport dealers at the National, but I didn't locate any significant deals this time around.

4. 1963 Post Canadian pickups

Fortunately, a couple of trading friends passed along bilingual singles, because the show was a goose egg otherwise for affordable French singles. Zut alors.

5. Unexpected type set discovery: 1934 Sport Kings Varsity Football Game

Baseball comprises 99% of my type set, but I make some vintage exceptions and this is one I've been tracking for some time.

When you see Varsity Football cards in the case, this is the side they show. All the pennants make for an interesting frame and it says SPORT KINGS in big, friendly letters. You can forgive a dealer for not caring about showing the text-heavy "game piece" side, so I asked directly.

Me: "Can you check the number for this Varsity football card? I need a specific number."

Dealer: "Oh, there's a number?" (He picks up card, looks at the back, and holds it up without flipping it over.) "What number do you want it to be?"

Me: "I want it to be #5."

Dealer: "OK." (Long pause) "Well, it is #5. How did you do that?"

Me: "If I could do that every time, I would!"

So why was I excited about Sport Kings Varsity Football? Unlike the ample online love for Goudey's seminal 1933 baseball set, this piece of their history left few traces. Back in 1934, collectors picked up this flipping game from candy counters, but not from inside packs. It used the same kind of customer loyalty promo still evident at this year's National, where card makers offered walk-up, in-person bonuses to those who bought their packs on-site. Here's the guide Goudey included in their Sport Kings Gum deliveries.

In other words, 1930s shop owners gave Sport Kings customers these Varsity game cards and a game board to flip them on. (More details in my Varsity Football set post.) No known Football Score Charts survive today, so we don't know quite what they looked like, other than "probably something like a football field."

Other stuff!

In general, I spend Nationals shopping at tables of ungraded vintage. After two days walking the floor, I located 50 such dealers, which meant plenty to flip through and buy. About 300 new cards came home with me and I (finally) started work on the 1960, 1961, and 1963 Fleer sets, three significant parts of the hobby's competitive landscape. While 1960-61 stuck to retired players, their 1963 set challenged Topps directly by printing active Major Leaguers, including the not-in-Topps defending NL MVP.

1963 Fleer #43, Maury Wills

Many consider this Maury's Rookie Card, since Topps infamously didn't sign him to a $5 card contract in 1959. Their 1963 release saw Topps take Fleer to court, get an injunction on any remaining plans to publish cards of active players, and affirm an exclusive MLB license that persisted until 1981 and once again exists today.

Oh yeah, Topps hosted a custom card booth! Here's me goofing with OldBaseball.com friends Ken and Sal.

If you made the National, how'd it go? If you've never been, 2017-19 are Chicago, Cleveland, and Chicago, respectively...

National Sports Collectors Show 2015, day two (Thursday) highlights

As time and tide wait for no man, neither do your feet adjust to hours of pounding around the robust concrete floors of Rosemont's convention center. Oy vey. But onto the cards!

I spent two hours sifting through variety boxes at one of my favorite National dealers, Kurt Tourdot. Thanks to John and Len, I also spent awhile thinking about a new haircut. Unitas has a classic gridiron look, but Dawson's closer to what will actually happen on my head.

Speaking of haircuts, here's another guy with a buzz.

Despite finishing my own 1976 SSPC baseball set a few years ago, I'd completely forgotten about its #589 George Brett / Al Cowans Cowens masterpiece of no-budget photography. SSPC showcased several great goofball photos in the "high numbers," but I think this is the best.

It's hard to find subtle, excellent design like the colors and script used for 1962 Post Cereal's CFL set. Would've loved this photo design for Post's baseball sets, which feel cramped in comparison.

Other than last year's Allen & Ginter barbed wire card, Dan Gladden is as close as I'll get to seeing "Glidden" on a trading card.

The barbed wire card, with mention of my great-great-great-uncle Joseph.

I spent an hour-plus sifting through a table of oddball postcards and photos, including this snapshot of Joe DiMaggio looking down at something. He also has a good haircut.

One table featured an 800-count box of autographed 1970s minor league cards. This TCMA manager card from Dubuque's Packers, an Astros farm team, was my favorite for many reasons. They are all cornball and exaggerated reasons.

Nice Yankees patch and perfect companion to this Brooklyn patch from day one.

Longtime blog readers might recall the National Poster Stamp Society's "Eureka Sportstamps" article about their Yankees promotional set. Here's another of their products, a booklet of stick-ons to liven up any kids' binder or desk or what have you.

None of these seals had been sealed to anything, so I suspect it was found in storage rather than purchased for 19c by a sports or seals enthusiast.

At one point, I tried to collect the 1936 S&S Game, one of the hobby's easier 1930s sets to finish. While available primarily as singles into today's vintage market, this was the source for all such cards: a boxed board game called The National Game.

This game came complete with lineups, multiple rule cards, and even a "CASH AWARDS" promo that asked players to write a 100-word essay on why they liked the game itself. That last bit's some cunning work by S&S itself, since customer-written essays would give them a ready supply of marketing research and ideas. In this shape it fetches four figures, well above what I can afford on a collectible.

I found a few more type cards, including these from 1927-29 W560, a multi-sport set with one #5 for each card suit.

In order to better understand the explosion of the 1930s trading card market, I've also picked up more Goudey and National Chicle cards from that era, including some of Goudey's "Indian Chewing Gum," a large set about the American West.

My first two Indian Gum cards ($3 each) feature a settler and a "border patrol leader," spiritual forerunner of today's Texas Rangers law enforcement unit. Clearly a good set for fans of beards.

#49: "[Gen. Ben McCulloch] introduced into the West that death-dealing instrument, the six shooter..."

Speaking of six-shooters and "Indians," here's Sonny Sixkiller, Cherokee and former star QB for the University of Washington, my alma mater. He reprised this role, kind of sort of, as a player in 1974's "The Longest Yard."

Sonny's the true-life QB in this promo photo, instead of leading man Burt Reynolds, who played halfback for FSU. Sonny's career continued briefly as a pro for the 1970s WFL (which itself played but briefly) and he remains in football today as a TV analyst.

In addition to the earlier pair of W560 type cards, I also scored this 1968 Tipps from the Topps #5 panel on turning the double play for $25, starring the Cardinals' Julian Javier. While I'd written about that set based on scans back in 2012 (set profile), it's great to finally own the real deal.

Total #5 type cards owned now stands at 550 for both major and minor leagues! I know that's far more than I thought existed when this project started. Maybe there's another handful to locate before the show's over...? Day three tomorrow!

1933-34 R339 Goudey Sport Kings Varsity Football Game #5

As we near the start of 2014's college football season, I've been looking back several decades to the leatherheads era, when "face mask" was a thing people wore for ski slopes and Halloween. (I haven't looked back to that era by watching the movie Leatherheads, although I did see it back in 2008 and it was...OK, I guess.)

While best-known today for their baseball cards, Goudey introduced several successful gum-and-card sets in 1933, including the multi-sport Sport Kings Gum.

1933 Goudey "Sport Kings Gum" #5, Ed Wachter

This 48-card set covered a remarkable 20 different sports, an amalgam spurred by the massive promotional success of 1933's baseball All-Star Game, which raised sports fan interest across the board.

To put yourself in the shoes of a 1930s gum buyer, "baseball cards" had nowhere near the significance we attach to them now, but trading cards in general were popular, so almost any topic was open for co-marketing. As the school year began, Goudey created this card-flipping college football game as an in-store promotion to keep sales moving for Sport Kings Gum itself.

1933 Goudey Varsity Football #5 (pennant side)

The lack of specific players makes this set more about the colleges themselves. As of 2014, 119 NCAA schools compete at the I-A level. Compare that to 1933's list of school pennants on each Goudey card, which number fewer than 20.

1. Army
2. Duke
3. Ohio State
4. Colgate
5. Harvard
6. Penn State
7. Nebraska
8. Cornell
9. Iowa
10. Rutgers
11. Holy Cross
12. Stanford
13. Wisconsin
14. Alabama
15. Columbia
16. Boston College
17. Centre (College)
18. Yale

While I'm a native of Wisconsin and resident of Harvard's hometown (Cambridge, MA), consider me most partial to Centre College as the place my parents met. That august institution also holds the relevant distinction of winning "one of the greatest college football upsets in history," by beating then-mighty Harvard on their home turf in 1921.

While very rare today, we know a few things about how Varsity Sports was distributed. Sport Kings Gum buyers could swap their wrappers at the candy store for individual cards and "score charts," which Varsity Sports players used to track game progress.

Goudey sales letter for Varsity Football & its score charts

The high grade of most Varsity Football cards in today's market implies that most sat undisturbed in storage and were later rediscovered. (Like most vintage cards, I assume a large percentage ended up in trash cans.)

1933 Goudey Varsity Football #5 (play side)

All 24 Varsity Football cards feature a different collection of play outcomes, which you'd match to a given situation and track on Goudey's score chart, which appears on the flip side of its game rules.

Players make the choice to rush/pass or punt/place kick from your team's field position and flip cards face up to see what happened. You'd need a way to track down and distance and some sort of timer or allowed number of possessions. Someone at Goudey enjoyed writing out all this encouraging text!

If the concept of this "flip to play" game sounds familiar, it might be because Goudey repurposed this concept on a larger scale for their 1936 Big League Gum baseball set. 

1936 Goudey Big League Gum, Oral Hildebrand

While scarce, they're much easier to find today than Varsity Football. Read my profile of Goudey's 1930s Customer Loyalty Programs for a deeper look at how their sets fit together.

Value: Many singles on eBay open at $50 BIN, a high price considering the set's lack of real players. A complete 24-card, mid-to-nice condition set auctioned for $200 in 2013 and another near-set (21/24) also finished at $200 in 2012. I suspect cards will move faster at $15-20.

Fakes / reprints: The modern-retro Sporting Life company published this Varsity Football homage in 2012, adding player portraits to an otherwise similar layout.

2012 Sporting Life Varsity Football Game #9, Jim Thorpe

As with other Sporting Life sets, modern collectors should not mistake them for 1930s originals. (I don't expect the original Varsity Football cards were reprinted, given their lack of name players.)