Recent Collection Purchased From 1914: B18 Blankets

1914 B18 Baseball Blankets

At Dean's Cards, we buy hundreds of vintage baseball card collections every year. These collections range from cards acquired during childhood (that have most likely been sitting in a closet or attic for years), to collectors selling their baseball card sets and cards that have taken years to acquire through shows, card shops, or a website like DeansCards.com. This is another story of a recent collection we were able to purchase.

Baseball collectibles can take on many forms. Generally, when we get a collection mailed to us (and we get a lot! Hundreds a year.), they are those little cardboard rectangles that Goudey, Topps, Fleer, Bowman and other gum companies made so popular. This is overwelmingly the case, maybe even 95% of the time.

1914 B18 Blanket Depicting Ty Cobb

That's not to say baseball "cards" are the only things we buy and sell. But when you get into the late 1940's, to the beginning of Topps in the early 50's, and to the present; baseball cards (mostly around the 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" variety) are the standard.

That wasn't always the case. The sport of baseball has been around since the mid to late 1800's. From that time until around the World War II era, there would be a lot of different companies using the stars of the baseball diamond to market their product.

So what are these things anyways?

The 1914 B18 Baseball Blankets are anything but conventional when it comes to your average baseball card collecting. In fact, you may find these in a closet, attic, barn, etc. and not have a clue what they are or if they have any value. For this reason I'm sure that a lot of them have just been discarded and maybe thrown away over the years.

1914 B18 Blanket of Casey Stengel

There are some instances in which these blanket squares have been quilted into bigger blankets. And it's amazing how well some of these little felt squares have held up after 100 years.

Overall, the 1914 B18 Baseball Blankets set consists of 91 cloth squares, 56 of which have at least two color variations.  The blankets are organized by baseball team and then alphabetically by player's last name.   They were obtained as a promotion given by various cigarette companies.

A look at the 13 B18 Shoeless Joe Jackson Blankets
that we purchased as part of a larger collection.

The Shoeless Joe Jackson B18 Find

Okay, so many of you might not get overly excited about a bunch of 5 1/4" felt squares, but we recently got a collection sent to us that included something special in it. Thirteen, count them 13, Shoeless Joe Jackson blankets were included with this collection! They can all be found for sale here.

Check out our inventory of B18 Blankets at Dean's Cards

If you're interested in selling your collection to us, please read our seller testimonials. On there you will find dozens upon dozens of satisfied clients. For more information on selling a vintage baseball collection in general, please click here. We look forward to hearing from you!

By Dean Hanley

 Dean Hanley, founder and owner of DeansCards.com, is considered one of the foremost experts on the subject of vintage baseball cards, other sports and non-sports cards and has a regular column in the Sports Collectors Digest and publishes articles on his blog.

Dean has also written two books on vintage sports cards: The Bubble Gum Card War: The Great Bowman & Topps Sets from 1948 to 1955 and Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards. Both are available in eBook and paperback form.