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FRIDAY FEBRUARY 25, 2022 • VOL. 52, NO. 8
Two Of Baseball’s Rarest Cards, Featuring Honus Wagner And Ty Cobb, Make Their Auction Debut Winter Platinum Night Sports Event Set For Feb. 26 And 27 Gary Dean Simpson got into baseball card collecting like many kids. “I was enamored of baseball, I was going to be a baseball player, and it was a bond with my dad.” This was in the 1970s, when Gary Dean was just entering his teenage years, primetime for a wannabe baller with a passion for gathering colorful cardboard keepsakes featuring hardball heroes, especially in small-town Mineral Wells, Texas, where the kid spent blazing-hot, bone-dry summers with his parents, farmers by profession and antique traders by passion. By the time he turned 14, Simpson turned to the buying and selling of cards, taking out ads in “Sports Collectors Digest” and “The Trader Speaks.” He became a treasure hunter, accompanying his grandfather to antique stores in search of old cards to buy and sell. But it was one trip in particular that changed his life and the cardcollecting hobby. “We went out to look at some clocks at an antique shop in Mineral Wells,” Simpson recalls. “My PaPa knew the owner, who had given him a call and said, ‘I know your grandson Gary Dean loves these cards. Well, I got a chest in from St. Louis that you might want to have a look at, because I haven’t seen these cards. I don’t know anything about them.’” Inside that chest, collected in an old family photo album, were seven
Auctions’ Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 26 and 27, Winter Platinum Night Sports Auction, a Honus Wagner graded PSA Near Mint 7 and a Ty Cobb bearing the same grade. That these cards exist at all is astonishing. But Simpson’s cards are truly breathtaking, in that his Wagner card is the only one known to have survived more than a century later, while the Cobb offering is the best example of the eight ever handled by PSA. Continued on page 8
The Honus Wagner is graded PSA Near Mint 7. sepia-toned, blank-backed 3-by-4inch cards featuring game-action photos of deadball players identified only by last name and the teams for which they played. The only other words on the cards identified, Plow’s Candy Collection. Simpson had never seen them before. As it turned out, few ever had. In his “Sports Collectors Bible,” the second edition of which was published in January 1977, Bert Randolph Sugar listed 34 known players included in that particular set of cards, and Simpson had two in his hand not on that list. That made him wonder, who made these cards? And how many of them were printed? Years later, after the Texasbased engineer turned back to card
collecting, those two questions threw him down a rabbit hole from which he has yet to escape. In time, the Plow’s Candy Collection, dated 1912, though sold in 1913 as premiums with chocolate made by the namesake company founded in Chicago in 1885, would come to be known as The Miracle Set. That’s because there are only some 175 so-called E300 cards known to exist today, according to the grading services. And, though the “Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards” lists 69 cards in the Plow’s Candy Collection, even today, it remains unclear how many cards constitute a complete set. This much is certain: Simpson is selling two of his Plow’s Candy Collection cards in Heritage
Popular Elverson Show Is Back Quality Antiques Show To Be Held May 7 And 8 The Elverson Show has returned. After a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19 concerns, the Elverson Antique show will return to the Twin Valley High School on Saturday and Sunday, May 7 and 8. The committee is excited to resume the show, which will continue to feature fine country antiques, folk art, primitives, and decorative accessories. Many of the same dealers are planning to return after patiently waiting for the green light from the school district. The last time the show was held in March 2019, it celebrated its 50th year. The show began as a fundraiser for the Elverson Fire Company, but now is held in the Twin Valley High School and supports the athletic department, specifically the lacrosse team, whose Continued on page 5
The Ty Cobb is graded PSA Near Mint 7.
The Morgan Showcases One Of The Most Influential Songwriters And Recording Artists In American History “Woody Guthrie: People Are The Song” Opens Feb. 18 The Morgan Library & Museum presents “Woody Guthrie: People Are the Song,” running through Sunday, May 22. Curated in collaboration with the Woody Guthrie Center, Woody Guthrie Publications, and music historian Bob Santelli, the exhibition tells the story of the great American troubadour and writer Woody Guthrie in his own words and by his own hand. On view is an extraordinary selection of musical instruments, handwritten lyrics, manuscripts, photographs, books, art, and audiovisual media, assembled from the preeminent holdings of the Woody Guthrie Archive and several private collections. Prominent among these rarely seen objects are the original, handwritten lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land,” one of the world’s most famous protest songs, which Guthrie composed just a few blocks away from the Morgan in 1940. More than 80 years later, this song remains enduringly popular, as Guthrie’s words maintain a vital relevance today. The exhibit traces Guthrie’s life and career through his artistic response to several interrelated themes: place, politics, family, love, and spirituality. Running through these themes is an emphasis on Guthrie’s connection to “people,” to specific people in his life, historical figures of his era, and the anonymous workers, soldiers, and immigrants whose stories appear in so much of his music. Songs like “My Thirty Thousand,” “Deportee,” “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard,” and “Union Maid” express Guthrie’s Continued on page 9
In This Issue SHOPS, SHOWS & MARKETS . . . . . . . . . starting on page 3 SHOPS DIRECTORY . . . . . . . . . on page 5 EVENT & AUCTION CALENDAR . on page 7 AUCTION SALE BILLS . . starting on page 8 AUCTIONEER DIRECTORY . . . . on page 8
FEATURE RESULTS: Pook & Pook January 13 And 14 Auction - Page 2
CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . . . . . . . .on page 11
