Goudeys, Hobby Gatherings and
Chasing Card Issues
Not too many of us collected cards in 1931, owned sets of T205s, T207s, complete runs of Bowmans and Topps as well as thousands of regionals and team sets and are still at it sorting current cards into sets. Did I also mention having a card set named after you? On Jeopardy the question would be “Who is Bob Solon?”
Bob Solon was a name I had seen in The Card Collector’s
Bulletins of the 1950s and 1960s. He was an active hobbyist during those
years writing occasionally for the Bulletin and other publications. He had
participated in the early card shows in the
Bob was born in
Bob’s interest in baseball came first. He remembers being
with his father listening to a radio broadcast by announcer Pat Flanagan of a
1929 World Series game between the Chicago Cubs and Connie Mack’s Philadelphia
A’s. Hack
Bob’s neighborhood provided drug stores and confectionary
stores where Bob first found the R89 Mickey Mouse cards by Gum, Inc. in 1931.
By 1933 Bob had his eye out for baseball cards. He saw the DeLongs
in one store, but he bought the Goudeys. Bob pursued
the Goudeys in earnest eventually accumulating about
500 of them; organizing them by the color of their backgrounds. He remembers
having card # 181 of Ruth with a purple background that should have been
printed with a green background. I don’t know that the card has ever surfaced
again. He was interested in the players (and the color of the backgrounds) and
didn’t pay much attention to the numbers on the back. He had three Ruth cards,
never running across the fourth card – a full-length pose of Ruth batting that
was actually a double print. He was unaware of Foxx and Gehrig having two
different numbers. High numbers were very hard to find in
Bob’s collecting coincided with the Great Depression. His
family had an opportunity to move into a flat with steam heat rather than a
stove and they jumped at it. Bob’s sources of cards were altered in the new
neighborhood. He picked up some cards from other kids and would buy a few new
cards as they came out. The 1934 Goudeys didn’t
inspire him like the ‘33s. The 1935 puzzle cards were “a disaster.” How could
you put four players on one card from different teams in any kind of order? Bob
remembers the 1938 Goudeys, 1940 Double Headers, and
1941 Goudeys as not much better. The 1939 and 1940 Playballs never made it to Bob’s neighborhood. Bob’s
collecting had the normal interruptions like school, girls and also a World
War. The cards disappeared as quickly as they had accumulated. Phase one of Bob’s collecting ended as he went off to war in
Fast forward to Bob Solon school teacher in 1954. A kid in
his class dropped a 1954 Topps Gus Zernial on the
floor. Bob liked what he saw. Some of the older kids had a 1953 Mantle and a
1953 Musial. Bob caught the bug for the second time. He was off and running by
1955. He went to wholesalers and picked up the Topps, Bowmans,
and Topps Double Headers. He kept collecting in quantity through wholesalers,
except for the tough 1957 Topps series that was only available in one candy
store. Bob subscribed to the Sporting News and saw dealer Sam Rosen of
Through Carter, Bob met other collectors. The turning point being a meeting of four hobbyists at Carter’s home in late September 1958. The foursome was Buck Barker of St. Louis, Charlie Bray of East Bangor, Pennsylvania and Bob Solon and Lionel Carter (both from the Chicago area). Bray had taken over as editor of The Card Collector’s Bulletin and continued to run his bi-monthly auctions of cards. He brought along a T206 Wagner that he kept in a type of picture frame, Carter recalls. Buck Barker was the avid baseball fan and collector that joined Bray and Burdick as an editor of the American Card Catalog helping catalog the post-war baseball sets. Lionel Carter was probably the first to write an article about baseball cards in 1936 and continued as a frequent hobby publication writer as well as a collector of quality baseball cards. The last series of 1958 Topps had just come out and Bob had visited his wholesaler. He brought to the gathering the triple printed 1958 Musials as well as the tougher “single prints” of Hardy, Harrell, and Preston Ward. He gave them to anyone who needed one. Without hesitation Bob remembered that he needed card #51 of Charlie Grimm to complete his recently assembled 1933 Goudey set. Lionel Carter just handed him the card and said to keep it.
Carter wanted the best condition cards. Bob and Buck Barker
had an interest in the more obscure players. Barker told him that he would
rather have cards of ten obscure rookies than a duplicate of Mantle. Barker and
Solon agreed that the Wagner (pulled from circulation) and Plank (broken
printing plate) should be at a premium but didn’t see a reason for premiums on
star cards. Bob said that others did however like Bruce Yeko.
Yeko wound up completing a chain of transactions
starting with Sam Rosen. Bob recalls that Rosen was ill and sold his card
business in
An example of Bob’s interest in the obscure player is
demonstrated by his story of finding that a card had been issued of Marshall Renfroe, a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. Now if you
say to yourself that you remember Marshall Renfroe
you might be just remembering his 1960 Leaf high numbered card, because to have
seen him in action would have required extreme vigilance. Like Topps having to
picture such household names as Stan Jok and Paul Penson to come up with a set of players not under contract
to Bowman, the 1960 Leafs practically cornered the market on obscure players. Renfroe made one major league appearance in late 1959. He
started a game, pitched 2 innings and retired with a 27.00 ERA. He appeared in no other set and 1960 Leaf
high numbers weren’t too easy to find. Bob found the cards were in packages
with marbles not too far away on the west side of
Bob developed an affinity, or perhaps more accurately an affliction, for going after regional and team issues in quantity. Anyone could go to a store and buy the one annual issue of Topps cards, but Cardinal postcards, Seattle Rainiers issues, Kahns, Kelloggs and other regionals were a challenge. By the late 1960s collectors were “augmenting” the Topps regular issues with some of their own creations. If the teams weren’t going to put out sets, some collectors felt an obligation to help them along. Bob and friends put together 5 sets between 1969 and 1970: Expos (2 sets), A’s, Royals, and Orioles. “Fud’s Photography” Montreal Expos was the first effort with 200 sets selling at the time for $2 per set. The set still appears in the SCD Catalog as a “collector issue” and now lists at $40 per set. Although Bob was involved with the set, he thought the photography was not the best. The Kansas City Royals issue is also listed in the SCD Catalog as the “1969 Solon Kansas City Royals” and is still at an affordable $16. The 1970 La Pizza Royale Expos was a set that I had been looking for to add to my type card collection. I finally found one card a few years ago. It is amazing that I found a single card. I should have asked Bob for a set. Bob and friends made up the name La Pizza Royale as well as about 800 sets and issued them to collectors for a few dollars a set. The photography, write-ups and sales were quite an accomplishment and a lot of work.
FUDs Photography
The Colorful LaPizzaRoyale Cards
The Exhibit Supply Company operations were in
Bob had a knack for getting quantities of Kellogg cards in the 1970s. Kellogg went so far as to print 3 of the cards in the 57-card 1976 set at a different printer in another part of the country in order to make collecting the set a bit more of a challenge. Bob was fast and furious hobbyist for about 25 years.
Bob’s recollection of these cards are so accurate that in
checking my notes against catalogs after my interview I soon stopped being
amazed that Bob still knew Charlie Grimm’s card number or who the short prints
were in 1958. Opportunities came along to buy out collections such as that of
J.J. Siko’s of
Obbdalls and Obscures all from the shoebox
It is not surprising that Bob has also retained a few items from his older collection. The cards and photos are those of the obscure players that Bob and collectors like Buck Barker worked to chase down. If Bob couldn’t find a one-time card of someone like Marshall Renfroe, he would find a photo. The back of the photo might have vintage baseball photographers “George Burke” or “George Brace” stamped on it. Bob’s other surviving interest has been the odd-ball cards. Bob can produce shoe boxes of cards with random assortments of Topps inserts, O-Pee-Chees, ‘70s basketball and hockey, Kelloggs, Jack in the Box Angels, collector issues, and exhibits. Bakery and candy issues from the 1910s and 1920s appear from the bottom of boxes in no particular order. Looking for a Senator Police issue, a 1967 Topps Red Sox sticker, or a 1963 Pepsi Colt 45? Bob has them in a box somewhere. (In Bob’s experience the toughest post-war card to find by far is the 1963 Pepsi-Cola Colt .45 of John Bateman.) Minor league team issues from the 1970s are there along with pins from 1910. Dig a bit further and you can find a dozen or so Roberto Clemente 1962 Post Cereal cards. Bob will reach into another box, pull out a recent obscure baseball issue, read the back of a card, find an error and thereby continue to stay involved in cards years after purchasing the Mickey Mouse cards of 1931.
Bob Still Looks for the Obscure Player
George
Vrechek is a freelance contributor to SCD and can be
reached at vrechek@ameritech.net
A big OBC thank you to Sports Collectors Digest (SCD)
for allowing us to reprint George's article here on the OBC site!