Your Information Resource for Vintage Baseball Cards
  eNews Issue #93 (January 2012)       www.oldcardboard.com


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Welcome to Old Cardboard, the most complete reference resource for information about collecting vintage baseball cards and related memorabilia.  More information about this eNewsletter and its companion website and magazine are found at the bottom of this page.

Contents:
1. Updated Auction and Show Calendar
2. Dixie Lid Find Suggests Eight Short-Printed Players
3. Latest Additions to the OldCardboard.com Website
4. News Briefs (A Digest of Recent Hobby Happenings)




1. Updated Auction and Show Calendar

The following is a summary of vintage card events coming up in the next 30-45 days. For the most current listings on additional vintage card shows and auctions, see the Key Events Calendar on the Old Cardboard website.

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January 2012

25Phone/Internet Goodwin & Co. Auction (see website for details).
26Phone/Internet Mile High Auction (see website for details).
26Internet Bagger's Auctions (see website for details).
26Internet Sirius Sportscards (see website for details).

February 2012

1Phone/Internet Clean Sweep Auctions (see website for details).
2Phone/Internet Huggins & Scott Auctions (see website for details).
15Phone/Internet Hunt Auctions (see website for details).


2. Dixie Lid Find Suggests Eight Short-Printed Players

A recently-surfaced partial sheet of 1953 Dixie Lid baseball players provides new details about the set and how it was produced. It also suggests that lids for eight of the players in the 24-player series may have been short printed, or produced in one-half the quantities of the other players.

The sheet (pictured at right) was brought to our attention by Lew Lipset, who will be selling it in his Spring 2012 auction ending April 5.

According to Lipset, the consignor discovered the sheet in a warehouse in Brooklyn some years ago along with a similar but larger sheet for the 1953 Dixie Lid non-sport set and other items. The consignor indicated that the sheets had been used as shades to cover windows in the warehouse.

As shown, the partial sheet contains 72 baseball players in six rows of twelve players each. It measures 28-1/2 inches wide by 14-1/2 inches tall.

Although the partial sheets for both the baseball and the non-sports sets have been trimmed, it can be determined from the patterns of both sheets that they were originally printed in a 16-row by 20-column format. Interestingly, the arrangement of subjects on both sheets repeats in the same pattern, with some subjects repeated more than others. The non-baseball sheet is somewhat larger with all sixteen rows intact along with 17-1/2 of the twenty columns. The nearly complete sheet (showing all or parts of 288 out of 320 lids) measures 39-1/2 by 41 inches.

The arrangement of subjects for both sheets is detailed in the chart below. The location on the sheet is indicated for all twenty-four subjects in each of the 1953 Dixie Lid sets--both baseball and non-sports.

As can be seen by referring to the chart, the subjects repeat every four rows. Sixteen of the twenty-four subjects in each set are printed in the first four columns, then again in columns 5 through 8, 11 through 14 and 17 through 20, respectively. However, different players are printed in columns 9 and 10, then again in columns 15 and 16.

As a result, players in columns nine, ten, fifteen and sixteen are printed in only half the quantity as those in the other columns. They are therefore "short printed" in a 1 to 2 ratio. The eight players in these columns are Sid Gordon, Bob Lemon, Nelson Fox, Ted Kluszewski, Richie Ashburn, Gene Woodling, Chico Carrasquel and Mel Parnell.

Prior to the discovery, neither Lipset nor any of the longtime Dixie Lid collectors that we contacted were aware that some of the players in the set were more or less scarce than others. There also seems to be little or no difference in the values of cards within the set based on apparent differences in the quantities printed.

It should be noted that the above partial sheet of 72 cards is different in format than the full 24-card sheet of 1953 Dixie Lids described in the Editor's Notebook section of Issue #6 (Winter 2006) of Old Cardboard magazine. That is because the 1953 Dixie Lid set was produced in two lid sizes: one measuring 2-1/4 inches in diameter and the other measuring 2-11/16 inches in diameter. The partial sheet described above contains lids of the smaller of the two sizes. The 24-card sheet pictured in the magazine features lids of the larger size. Both sheets are extremely rare and are likely the only examples that remain from the fifty-eight year old issue.

A Set Profile and Player Checklist for the 1953 Dixie Lids (same checklist for both sizes) has been added to the Old Cardboard website.


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3. Latest Additions to the OldCardboard.com Website

We are continually expanding the Old Cardboard website with more set profiles, checklists and card galleries. Recent (past 30-40 days) additions include:

Set Set Profiles have been added for:
1953   F7   Dixie Lids

Set Checklists have been added for:
1953   F7   Dixie Lids

Updating the website with checklists and full set galleries for additional vintage sets is an ongoing project, so check back often to check out the latest additions. There are now many thousands of card images on the website and the list continues to grow. We welcome and encourage feedback with checklist additions, card images, error corrections and suggestions. Please send all input to editor@oldcardboard.com.

In addition to these additions to the Old Cardboard website, we continue to expand and refine our eBay Custom Search Links to make finding vintage baseball cards on eBay easier than ever. The results of these searches are continuously changing, so check back often to find the most recent listings.


4. News Briefs (A Digest of Recent Hobby Happenings)

Wrong Doyle Pictured on Rose PCs. Reader Brian Terjung has noted that the Rose Co. postcard labeled "Doyle, New York N.L." is not Larry Doyle, who played for the New York N.L.. It is actually that of Slow Joe Doyle, who played for the rival New York A.L. at the time the cards were produced. The error has been added to the Mislabeled Cards Checklist in the Old Cardboard Reference Library. Other labeling errors in the set are also noted in the checklist.



Lyman and Brett Hardeman
Old Cardboard, LLC.

Old Cardboard, LLC. was established in December 2003, to help bring information on vintage baseball card collecting to the hobbyist.  Produced by collectors for collectors, this comprehensive resource consists of three components: (1) Old Cardboard Magazine, (2) a companion website at www.oldcardboard.com and (3) this eNewsletter. The Old Cardboard website contains more than 500 pages of descriptive reference information for baseball card sets produced fifty years ago or longer.  Each of these set summaries has a direct set-specific link to auctions and a similar link to 's powerful search engine for further research.  The website also includes a Show and Auction Calendar, an eBay Top 50 Vintage Sellers List, and much more.  As a result, the Old Cardboard website makes a great "Alt-tab" companion for vintage card shoppers and researchers.  Old Cardboard eNews provides current hobby news, upcoming shows and auctions, and updates to the website and the magazine.  It is published around the middle of each month.  For a FREE subscription to the eNewsletter, or for subscription information on Old Cardboard Magazine, please visit the website at www.oldcardboard.com.  If you find this information resource helpful, please tell your friends.  We need your support and your feedback. Thank you.