Hidden Gem: Rare Ty Cobb E95 Promo Card Discovered

By Jon Hanley

Last week an exciting discovery was made deep in the dungeons of Dean’s Cards. As Dean’s son, home from college, I was given the task of researching this unique Ty Cobb card, a relic previously undiscovered. When Dean first acquired this artifact over ten years ago, he knew it was old and most likely rare, but remained unsure what he had on his hands. After several experts admitted they had never seen anything like this item before, Dean hesitated from releasing it to the market. As a result, this cardboard depiction of the 4,000 hit club’s founding member sat on a shelf and waited ten more years until its mysteries were finally unraveled.

Photo by Dean's Cards

According to our research, Philadelphia Caramel expert Erik Varon recently discovered a nexus between this lookalike E95 Ty Cobb card and a Philadelphia Caramel Company advertisement issued circa 1910. Varon concluded this card was cut from an ad similar to the one pictured below, which was probably distributed to convince potential vendors to carry the company’s soon to be released baseball cards. This would make this item one of the earliest known promo cards. These 1909 Philadelphia Caramel cards were later designated by collectors as E95’s, and feature twenty-five stars of the day including Cobb. While our find may appear almost identical to the E95 Cobb card, further inspection will reveal that the lettering was enlarged and moved from the bottom margin to above Cobb’s head, probably to make the image more suitable for a larger print.

Photo by Erik Varon

The most peculiar part of this card is the jumble of wordage featured on the backside, the characteristic which enables the item’s identification. While the front of the ad featured Cobb, the backside described the company’s caramel and other products with phrases like “jelly confections” and “soft cream centered chocolates”. These words match up almost perfectly with the Philadelphia Caramel Co. advertisement mentioned above.

Photo by Net54

As learned from an online forum, the ad included a second promo card beside Cobb featuring prizefighter Jim Jeffries, who came out of retirement to challenge the 1908 Heavyweight Champion, Jack Johnson. The Philadelphia Caramel Co. simultaneously released a set of boxing cards, later designated as E79’s, since baseball and boxing were the two most popular sports in the United States at the time. When the backsides of the two cards are placed side-by-side they fit together like pieces in a puzzle.

Unfortunately, the full advertisement will likely never be found, as these cut-outs are extremely rare on their own. To our knowledge, this Cobb card is only one of three in acknowledged existence, making it the rarest item ever stumbled upon at Dean’s Cards.

One of these sold through Heritage Auctions in 2009, with the item description reading, “Until the full piece is discovered, this lone remnant will remain as our inspiration to keep searching those dusty attics and flea markets looking for long forgotten treasures.”

Our find is not only another remnant of this lost treasure but is in much better condition than the item sold eight years ago. Dean’s Cards will most likely auction this rare piece of history on eBay later in the month, but for the time being, we remain too caught up in the excitement of discovery to consider a starting price.

We hope our discovery will encourage others to join this Crusade to uncover further artifacts of America’s greatest pastime. After all, discoveries like this are one of the many pleasures of our favorite hobby and yet another reason why grown men still play with baseball cards. 

If you would like to read more about the Philadelphia Caramel Company, check out Erik Varon's new book, Jakob's Story and the American Dream, recently released on Amazon.

Recent Collection Purchased From 1909-1913: M101-2 Sporting News Supplements

1909-13 M101-2 Sporting News Baseball Supplements

At Dean's Cards, we buy hundreds of vintage baseball card collections through the mail each and 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.

M101-2 Sporting News Ty Cobb

Typically, as we have stated before, collections mailed to us (and we get a lot! Hundreds a year.), are usually in the form of those little cardboard rectangles that Goudey, Topps, Fleer, Bowman and other gum companies made so popular. 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's not the case for the collection we are featuring in this post. They're not really cards, although they feature baseball players. These poster-sized supplements are more like something that you'd hang on your wall rather than put in your bike spokes.


So what are these things anyways?

The 1909 M101-2 Supplements were issued with the Sporting News
sporadically throughout 1909-1913.

The 1909-13 M101-2 Sporting News Baseball Supplements set includes 100 poster-sized supplements measuring 7 1/2" x 10".  The front of the Sporting News supplements include a sepia photo of the players with date and player name.  Backs of the M101-2 supplements are blank.

The supplements were issued with Sporting News sporadically throughout 1909 to 1913. I say sporadic, because they weren't included with every Sporting News magazine, and there are large gaps in time where there was no supplement included at all.

The most interesting thing about this set might be the photography used to depict the baseball players. You rarely will see better photos taken during this time period of guys like Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, or Walter Johnson.

What makes it even better is that there are several supplements which have multiple players featured on the front. These player combinations range from players talking to shaking hands. The most valuable of these multi-player photos has to be the March 17, 1910 Ty Cobb / Honus Wagner.

The recent M101-2 Sporting News Supplements Find

This Sporting News Supplements set is loaded with photos of Hall-of-Famers.

Recently we had a rather large collection of these supplements sent to us through the mail that we were able to purchase. Most of these posters were in low to mid-grade condition, but they all had great eye appeal. These things are just plain neat, and the photography is beautiful. If you want something that captures a moment in baseball history to place around the man cave, these are close to perfect.

Included in the collection were supplements depicting Hall-of-Famers like: Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Eddie Plank, Walter Johnson and a famous non-HOFer - Shoeless Joe Jackson.

So head over to DeansCards.com and check these unique items out!

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.

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.

T207 Repint Complete Set

By Dean Hanley
Owner of Deanscards.com

The T207 set, commonly known as the brown background set, was originally manufactured by the tobacco industry giant, the American Tobacco Company, in 1912. The T207 baseball cards measure 1½” by 2-5/8”. Shortly after this set was printed, the American Tobacco Company would be dissolved due to the Sherman anti-trust legislation that broke the monopoly on tobacco.

The T207 baseball card set is a true hobby classic. The 200-card T207 set contains 13 players that are in Baseball’s Hall-of-Fame, including Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Frank Chance, John McGraw, Smokey Joe Wood and Joe Tinker. Two interesting T207 cards are Eddie Cicotte and Buck Weaver, who were members of the 1919 White Sox and banned from the game for life.


 This set is unique to Dean’s cards. We created it ourselves. It took a total of two years to get the entire process done. This is the only official T207 Reprint Set out there. To do so, we created a new company called Dean’s Reprints and began securing the needed images.

 This is one of the most famous pre-war sets and it was never issued or offered in the form of a reprint set. Reprint Sets give collectors the opportunity to enjoy cards that they might not be able to collect in the original form.

 DeansCards.com sells quite a few reprint singles and complete sets every year. For that reason, I decided we should recreate and issue a T207 reprint set. Due to the quality of the century old cards, almost all of the T207 images needed to be retouched. Great care was given making sure that the reprint cards remained true to the original set.


The original T207 set includes eight possible backs containing the name of tobacco brands in which the original cards were enclosed. We included a variety of these backs in the reprint set including three cards containing the ultra-scarce “Red Cross” backs. We were careful to use those backs on
cards, whose originals have been discovered with a Red Cross back.

One of the most interesting features of the T207 baseball card set are the player biographies on the back of the cards. Each of these bios needed to be retyped. We were careful to stay true to the original fonts and leave the original century old misspelled words. We also made sure to give it an assigned number to help collectors keep track. To ensure it is indeed a REPRINT, we added REPRINT to the back of the cards. I hope that the hobby purists will forgive us for these minor changes.

To view/purchase the original cards please click here.

 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.

The Rebirth of the T207- Brown Background Set – 100 years later

                             
A couple years ago, when I was co-writing my first e-book, Before there was Bubble Gum: Our favorite pre-World War I baseball cards, I became fascinated by the unique look of the T207 set. The T207 set, commonly known as the brown background set, was originally manufactured by the tobacco industry giant, the American Tobacco Company, in 1912. The T207 baseball cards measure 1½” by 2-5/8”. Shortly after this set was printed, the American Tobacco Company would be dissolved due to the Sherman anti-trust legislation that broke the monopoly on tobacco.

 The T207 baseball card set is a true hobby classic. The 200-card T207 set contains 13 players that are in Baseball’s Hall-of-Fame, including Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Frank Chance, John McGraw, Smokey Joe Wood and Joe Tinker. Two interesting T207 cards are Eddie Cicotte and Buck Weaver, who were members of the 1919 White Sox and banned from the game for life.


 Being a big fan of reprint sets, as they give collectors who may not have the time or money to collect the original set the opportunity to enjoy the cards; I was always disappointed that the T207 cards are the most famous of the pre-war sets that has never been offered in the form of a reprint set. This is something special about being able to hold the cards in your as you go the set and look at the players. I must not be alone in my opinion, as DeansCards.com sells quite a few reprint singles and complete sets every year. For that reason, I decided we should recreate and issue a T207 reprint set. To do so, we created a new company called Dean’s Reprints and began securing the needed images.

The T207 reprint set turned out to be quite an undertaking, and took us two years to complete! The other thing that delayed the T207 reprint set was that I also attempted to finish my first book to be issued in print form. Both projects are now complete and available for purchase.

 Due to the quality of the century old cards, almost all of the T207 images needed to be retouched. Great care was given making sure that the reprint cards remained true to the original set. The original T207 set includes eight possible backs containing the name of tobacco brands in which the original cards were enclosed. We included a variety of these backs in the reprint set including three cards containing the ultra-scarce “Red Cross” backs. We were careful to use those backs on cards, whose originals have been discovered with a Red Cross back.

 One of the most interesting features of the T207 baseball card set are the player biographies on the back of the cards. Each of these bios needed to be retyped. We were careful to stay true to the original fonts and leave the original century old misspelled words. The one “improvement” that I could not resist was suggested by my teenage son, Jonathan. Jonathan collects cards and commented what a pain it was to keep un-numbered sets organized. For that reason, we numbered each of the cards in the set. I did not feel too bad about adding this one improvement since we felt that we clearly needed to also indicate that every card was a “REPRINT” and not an original. I hope that the hobby purists will forgive us for these minor changes.

Take Care,
Dean Hanley


 TO PURCHASE A T-207 REPRINT SET PLEASE CLICK HERE.

Dean Hanley is an authority on vintage sports cards and has written numerous articles on the topic. Mr. Hanley is the founder DeansCards.com, and with well-over one million vintage cards in inventory, DeansCards.com is the largest seller of vintage cards on the web. Dean is author of the new book, “Bowman & Topps Baseball Card Sets of 1948-1955”, which is now available for sale at Amazon.com. Dean has also published “Before there was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards”, which is also available in eBook form at Amazon.com .Please visit www.DeansCards.com to purchase this T207 Set.


If you are looking to sell your cards we would be happy to hear from you. Please fill out our sell your collection form here and we will be in touch.

The Bowman Gum Company

Jacob Warren Bowman’s biography reads like a fictional character in a movie. Warren Bowman liked to brag that he had been “married, divorced and bankrupt before he turned twenty one years old.” Bowman was six-foot-three and weighed 200 pounds with an ego to match. Known as a playboy, Bowman was also as loud, as he was large. One observer noted, “When people met Bowman for the first time they were alarmed by his loud booming voice.”


 Bowman was born in Ohio and reared in New Mexico. At 18, Bowman moved to Los Angeles and launched a used car business that went under by the start of World War I. After that Bowman worked in Los Angeles as a police officer, until he was caught by a superior officer, in a squad car filled with young women.

 Bowman was a natural born entrepreneur and risk-taker. According to a 1937 Time Magazine article, “After going broke he settled down to work for the Overland used-car agency in Los Angeles until one day he heard that a steam laundry was badly needed in Tampico, Mexico, to wash oil workers' dirty shirts.”


 “By the time Bowman got to Tampico a local group had already started a steam laundry, so he bought a little motor boat to pull barges. When this enterprise failed, he and another young American chugged off to Veracruz, conceived the idea of revolutionizing the mahogany trade by floating mahogany logs down the rivers to the Gulf. The two adventurers struggled for several days getting a mahogany log out of the forest into a small stream, where, since mahogany is heavier than water, it immediately sank.”

Bowman eventually landed in Philadelphia with only $25 left to his name and started producing bubble gum, an idea that he came up with after a conversation with a gum salesman he met on a cross-country train ride. Bowman founded Gum, Inc., in Philadelphia in 1927. Within two years, Bowman’s “Blony” brand became the #1 selling penny bubble gum and after ten years, Blony had 60% of the U.S. market share of bubble gum sales.



 In his book, “Mint Condition”, Dave Jamison referenced a contemporary report saying that “inside his Philadelphia plant, Bowman presided over a Dr. No-like office, in which the walls were covered with mirrors and he used an electronic switch to buzz in visitors. He would throw another switch to open a hidden door to his conference room, where there was a cocktail lounge and bar.”

The story of Warren Bowman’s life was surreal and colorful. Stories about the man could fill a book. In the 1930’s, Bowman was removed as president of his company by the shareholders, but eventually recaptured control. He went through five wives, the last of which was 28 years his junior. Opinions on the character of Warren Bowman vary greatly, but just about all of his contemporaries agree that it was Bowman’s creativity, leadership and drive than made his company the leading seller of bubble gum.

Bowman’s success was in the cards 


Seeing the sales success that his competitors were having selling gum with cards, Bowman would not be left out. Seeing that the over-crowded baseball card market of the mid-1930’s left no room for profits, the insightful Bowman decided to enter the card market with a non-sporting theme – at least for the time being.


In 1936, Bowman issued his first card set, which was called “the G-Men and Heroes of Law Enforcement.” This set had a modest popularity, but Bowman was now in the card business and his major bubble gum card triumph was about to begin.

One night, while listening to a radio broadcast detailing the atrocities of the Sino-Japanese War, Bowman came up with the concept for the greatest non-sports set ever produced. Issued in 1938, the 240-card Horrors of War set gave a very pro-American view of the recent history of the Chinese-Japanese War, the Ethiopian War, and also the Spanish Civil War. Bowman later issued another 48 cards for the set that featured Nazi-Germany as the main aggressor.


A bubble gum card depicting war was not a new idea, but the 1938 Bowman Horrors of War Set took the concept to a whole new level and remains a hobby classic to this day. The graphics feature bayoneted victims, men in violent hand-to-hand struggles and the slaughter of innocent women and children. The Horror of War cards had tile such as: # 18 Japanese Bomb Orphanage and # 24 Italian Squadrons Flying Low Slaughter Ethiopians.


First offered in a series of 24 new cards every two weeks, Gum, Inc. produced the cards in what at the time was the state-of-the-art, full-color lithography process. This resulted in the proper reproduction of the brilliance and detail of the original art.

 President Franklin D. Roosevelt even used the cards as examples of the atrocities occurring overseas in an effort to awaken America from its isolationist stance. Roosevelt’s "bubblegum diplomacy" only helped to increase the popularity of the 1938 Horrors of War set.

Although the fascist regimes of Italy, Spain and Japan were all targeted , it was the Japanese who took the greatest offense, or at least had the greatest ability to show their outrage, towards Bowman. The Japanese people loved bubble gum. Having opened his first bubble gum factories in Japan in 1932, Bowman and Gum, Inc. were forever banned from doing business in the Japanese Empire and were forced to halt all gum production on the island.

 The set was so successful, that Bowman printed over 100 million Horrors of War cards. This is an incredible number, when you take into account that the country was in the middle of the Great Depression. At one point, Bowman was making $40,000 per week profit from the cards. Although Bowman would continue to issue sets of bubble gum cards containing scenes of war, none would come close to the success achieved by this classic set.


This article is taken from Dean’s upcoming book “The Gum Card War and the Great Bowman & Topps Baseball Card Sets of 1948-1955”, which is now available for sale at Amazon.com. 

Dean Hanley is an authority on vintage sports cards and has written numerous articles on the topic. Mr. Hanley is the founder DeansCards.com, and with well-over one million vintage cards in inventory, DeansCards.com is the largest seller of vintage cards on the web. Dean has also published “Before there was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards”, which is also available in eBook form at Amazon.com and has just released a T207 reprint set. For more information, please visit www.DeansCards.com

1949 Leaf Baseball Cards

Man!  That's a bright background!

Put on some sunglasses when viewing this set!  These backgrounds are vibrant and in your face.  The 1949 Leaf set is unique in that it was the first to be printed in color post-war.  The lack of image refinement, however, resulted in many slight color deviations and cards out of register. 

Backs promote "All-Star Baseball Gum"
and tell the kids to "Collect this series of Diamond Greats"

Card backs contain offers for a baseball album, all that was needed was to send in 5 wrappers and 25 cents. The card backs are sometimes found with incorrect or blank backs. And some cards were printed with a 1948 copyright date on the card back, but evidence indicates that the set was not released until 1949.

The 1949 Leaf Baseball card set is one of the hardest post war sets to complete. The set was skip numbered from 1-168 and half of the cards issued were printed in limited quantities making them harder to find.  The short prints created by this included stars and rookies such as: # 8 Satchel Paige, # 127 Enos Slaughter, and # 138 Larry Doby.

# 11 Phil Rizzuto - 1949 Leaf Baseball RK Card

Key Rookies for this year include:  
# 8 Satchel Paige, 
# 11 Phil Rizzuto, 
# 38 Ted Kluszewski, 
# 79 Jackie Robinson, 
and # 138 Larry Doby.


Hall-of-Famers featured in the set are: # 1 Joe DiMaggio, # 3 Babe Ruth, # 4 Stan Musial, # 8 Satchel Paige, # 11 Phil Rizzuto, # 32 Warren Spahn, # 46 Johnny Mize, # 59 Luke Appling, # 70 Honus Wagner, # 76 Ted Williams, # 79 Jackie Robinson, # 83 Bobby Doerr, # 91 Ralph Kiner, # 93 Bob Feller, # 98 Hal Newhouser, # 106 Lou Boudreau, # 117 Joe Gordon, # 120 George Kell, # 127 Enos Slaughter, and # 138 Larry Doby.

Need a Checklist???  Click Here!

Price Guide???  Check This Out!

Dean's Cards has an extensive inventory of 1949 Leaf Baseball Cards in stock and ready for purchase.  Also, check out other Leaf Gum Co. vintage cards for sale such as: 1948 Leaf Football Cards, 1949 Leaf Football Cards, 1960 Leaf Baseball Cards, and 1966 Leaf Good Guys and Bad Guys.  And keep an eye out for more Vintage Baseball Cards, Vintage Football Cards, and other Vintage Cards and Collectibles on our Recently Added Cards page!

1933 Goudey Sport Kings (R338)

The 1933 Goudey Sport Kings set is a beautiful offering filled with superstars from the 1920's and 1930's, hailing from many different sports and walks of life.  This set is renowned for it's vibrant color fronts and just clean and crisp overall look.  The set includes 48 cards that measure 2 3/8" x 2 7/8".  The card fronts feature color portraits with the players name listed at the bottom.  The card backs are in printed in green and have interesting biographies on each "Sport King."

# 2 Babe Ruth  - 1933 Goudey Sport Kings

This set includes only three baseball cards: #1 Ty Cobb, #2 Babe Ruth, and #42 Carl Hubbell. We previously blogged about the beautiful # 2 Babe Ruth SGC 8.5 NM/MT+ we have for sale at DeansCards.com.  This card of the sultan of swat is perhaps one of the most attractive cards from the 1933 Goudey Sports Kings set, and maybe one of the Bambino's best looking cards of the 1930's.  

Football players Red Grange, Jim Thorpe, and Knute Rockne are also featured cards.  The black silhouettes that illustrate the bottom border of the football cards are cool.  They show scenes such as that of a player diving for a touchdown, or a big pileup of tacklers with the runner doing his best to evade the scrum.

# 2 Ruth (Back) - 1933 Goudey Sport Kings

The 1933 Goudey Sport Kings set includes some of the first professional basketball cards ever.  This was also the only multi-sport offering sold by the Goudey Gum Company.

The rest of the Pre-War vintage card set consists of ice skaters, hockey players, aviators, swimmers, and even golfers (notably Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen among others!).

# 4 Red Grange - 1933 Goudey Sport Kings

Dean's Cards has a variety of different 1933 Goudey Sport Kings, 1933 Goudey Sport King Reprints, and other issues from the Goudey Gum Company.  

We also have a variety of other sets produced by the Goudey Gum Company, including: 1933 Goudey Baseball Cards, 1934 Goudey Baseball Cards, 1938 Goudey Heads Up Baseball Cards, and 1933 Goudey Indian Gum Non-Sports Cards. 

1933 World Wide Gum Uncut Sheet

Just yesterday, we at Dean's Cards had the great fortune of having a very interesting piece of memorabilia walk through our doors- a 1933 World Wide Gum Uncut Sheet of cards. This extremely rare uncut sheet of Pre-War cards features names equally rare among collectors; including Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig and three Babe Ruth cards (two #80 cards and one #93). In fact, until we're proven otherwise, we're going to believe this product is absolutely one-of-a-kind.

The World Wide Gum set is commonly viewed as the Canadian brother to the American Goudey brand and occasionally features both English and French languages. However, our prized 1933 uncut sheet is in World Wide Gum's more standard English only. With no other branding on the cards, the giveaway that the cards are from World Wide Gum is the "Printed in Montreal" markings on them.

To view the ever-beautiful 1933 World Wide Gum Uncut Sheet, please click here.

1933 U.S. Caramel Baseball Cards

One of the rarest sets from the 1930's is the 1933 U.S. Caramel (R328) card sets. Nearly impossible to complete due to the #16 Charles Lindstrom card, there are 32 cards in the set, which includes boxers, baseball players, and golfers. Some of the most notable athletes in this set are Roger Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Jack Dempsey, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and Babe Ruth.

The U.S. Caramel Company was located in Boston and was one of the last companies to produce a caramel card set. Bubble gum was quickly becoming more popular and the success of the Goudey gum cards released that same year would quickly overtake caramel and tobacco cards.

The cards feature a distinctive red background on the front and, on the back, a short athlete biography, including stats, and a short redemption offer. These cards can be easily identified by the phrase "United States Caramel Co., East Boston, Mass."

Currently, we have a #23 Jimmie Foxx in stock. Please click here to view our entire selection of 1933 U.S. Caramel Cards.

Just In: 1933 DeLong Gum Lou Gehrig

The 1933 DeLong Gum baseball card set was originally released in 1933 and featured 24 of the biggest stars of the time period. One of the most prominent players in the set was #7 Lou Gehrig. At the time, Gehrig was in the middle of his career. The Yankees had just won the 1932 World Series over the Chicago Cubs in a decisive four game sweep. For his part, Gehrig had batted .349 in the 1932 regular season.

The DeLong Gum series is the only one released by the DeLong Gum Company of Boston. Of the 24 cards in the series, an incredible 15 players are now in the Hall of Fame. The cards do not have a player biography on the back, but instead have baseball tips written by Austen Lake, the editor of the Boston Transcript, a daily afternoon Boston newspaper. The cards are occasionally mistaken for a Play Ball set because they have the phrase "Play Ball Gum is as pure and as fine quality as any made -- contains real chicle." The DeLong Gum Company had no affiliation with the Gum, Inc. Company, which was based in Philadelphia and would not released its first set until 1939.

Please click here to view the #7 Lou Gehrig DeLong Gum baseball card.  Please click here to view our DeLong Gum reprint cards.

1938 Goudey Heads-Up Baseball Cards

#274 Joe DiMaggio

We currently have the most 1938 Goudey Heads-Up cards that we have ever had in stock, including two #274 Joe DiMaggio cards. In 1938, the Goudey Gum Company was starting to wind down its production of cards. They would produce only one more set in 1941. The 1938 set had some of the most unusual artwork ever produced on a baseball card. A realistic looking head was placed on a cartoon body and then, for the second series only, some tiny cartoons and phrases were written in the background.

#264 Bob Feller

The Goudey Gum Company decided to release these cards as a secondary set to the popular 1933 set. They would release two cards for all 24 players and number the cards 241-288. This numbering system meant that there would be two rookie cards for several players, including Bob Feller. Other stars in this set include Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, and Jimmie Foxx. Please click here to see our entire collection of 1938 Goudey Heads-Up baseball cards.  To see the reprint cards, please click here.

1941 Goudey Baseball Cards

The 1941 Goudey baseball card set is the last Goudey card set that was ever released. Goudey had made some of the best gum cards in its eight years of operation, so this set was somewhat of a disappointment. The set itself appears to be small at first glance, as it includes only 33 total players. However, there are four possible solid background colors for each card. The cards can come in blue, red, green, or yellow. According to PSA, the red background is the most difficult to find, while the other three colors are all equally abundant.

The 1941 Goudey set, or R324 set, is not popular with collectors for several reasons. It can be very difficult to build a master set with all four colors, but once the set is built, there are only two stars (Mel Ott and Carl Hubbell). These cards are also the only Goudey issue to have blank cardboard backs. Finally, many of the cards have rough edges or are badly miscut.

This type of card would go out of style, leading the Play Ball cards, which featured much nicer photographs and backs. However, these cards represent the end of the Goudey era, which gave collectors many wonderful sets to enjoy. Please click here if you are interested in viewing our inventory of 1941 Goudey cards. Please click here to see our selection of 1941 Goudey reprint cards.

Just In: T207 Baseball Cards

We just received one of the largest collections of T207 cards that we have ever had. For collectors, the T207 set can be very fun to collect because there simply are not very many star cards. We wrote a blog about the T207 several months ago (click here to read our previous blog). However, the expensive cards in this set are unknown players. The best example of this phenomenon is the Louis Lowdermilk card. The T207 set, unlike the other popular tobacco sets of the early 20th-century, does not have a reprint set, possibly due to the fact that there are so many common or unknown players in the original set. The set does combine some of the best aspects of the T205 and T206 sets. There are individual player biographies on the back of each card, but there are also simple backgrounds that emphasize the player instead of an ornate border.

Please click here to see our entire inventory of T207 cards.

Bert Sugar's Baseball Hall of Fame

Bert Sugar's Baseball Hall of Fame: A Living History of America's Greatest Game
By Bert Randolph Sugar & Bruce Curtis

Journey deep into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum with Bert Sugar’s Baseball Hall of Fame book. Enjoy more than 500 color and black-and-white original and archival photographs--along with engaging and informative commentary, and dramatic close-up images of the most fascinating artifacts on display in the Hall. This book offers a quintessential take-home of the timeless experience of baseball's spiritual home.

"What Bert Sugar doesn’t know about baseball, nobody knows." – Yogi Berra


"To get a better sense of the Hall of Fame, you would have to be in Cooperstown." – Bob Costas

Retail $35.00
Your Price $29.75

Order your copy of this timeless hardcover book today!

Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre- World War I Baseball Cards

We just finished our first eBook about our favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Card Sets. The eBook focuses on a variety of sets, some that we see every day and other that we have never seen in our ten years in business. Some of the content of the eBook comes from previous Pre-War blogs that we have posted here. It was a lot of work putting this together and we hope that those of you who enjoy our blog posts will also check out our eBook. Please click here to view our YouTube and find the links directing you to buy our eBook.