Vintage Card Of The Month- 1910 T51 Murad State University Of North Dakota

This month’s Vintage Card of the Month is the State University of North Dakota football card from the 1910 T51 Murad College Series. This is the 3^rd card from the set that I have picked up, this one was part of last year's COMC Black Friday package. 

The set is made up of 150 cards plus 75 variations, so there are plenty of cards to choose from and all types of sports are depicted, though I am mostly interested in the cards showing baseball, basketball, football and hockey. The basketball cards are not as common, only four schools (Luther, Northwestern, Williams and Xavier).

This card is in rough shape, the colors are still bright, and the back is unmarked, other than the packer’s stamp, but there are some unfortunately placed scratches across the front and a chip out of the right border to go with the soft corners.

Vintage Card Of The Month- 1910 T51 Murad Colgate

This month’s Vintage Card of the Month is the Colgate Raiders football team from the 1910 T51 Murad College Series. This is my 4^th card from the set, and 3^rd football card, and is a wonderful action illustration. I prefer the action shots over the portrait illustrations that are used in the set. 

It surprises me how well the colors and illustrations have held up for over a century, sure there is a crease in the upper right corner and the back has adhesive stickers, but will a 1991 Topps card look as good in 2091?

If I add other T51 Murad cards I am shooting for a baseball action illustration, basketball and hockey cards.

Vintage Card Of The Month- 1916 John Players & Sons Wonders Of The World Potala Palace

This month’s Vintage Card of the Month is the Potala Palace, located in Tibet, and this is from the 1916 John Player & Sons Wonders of the World. The set includes wonderful destinations from around the world like the Acropolis and the Grand Canyon. 

A set like this would be an amazing journey for a child in 1916. Imagine knowing nothing about Victoria Falls in Africa and then seeing these colorful illustrations and a short write up on the back. This card is the Potala Palace, which was the home and sanctuary of the Dalai Lama until the Chinese invaded.

The card is your typical tobacco sized card and is in nice condition, only a small crease in one corner. The card was reprinted 10 years later by the Wills Tobacco company. I have that card too.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1933 Goudey Sport Kings Duke Kahanamoku

 

This month’s VCoM comes from one of the most amazing sports sets ever, the 1933 Goudey Sport Kings Gum set. The 48-card set was released throughout 1933 and 1934 in packs of Sport Kings gum by Goudey.

Goudey did an amazing job with an awesome checklist, which was a complete necessity to get children to part with their pennies in the midst of the Great Depression and included athletes from a large variety of sports. Along with baseball, basketball, football and hockey there are also summer and winter Olympians as well as a number of outdoor athletes. Some of the big names are Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Red Grange, Jim Thorpe, Walter Hagen, Gene Tunney, Johnny Weissmuller and Bobby Jones.

Now you may remember a couple of years ago where I posted about purchasing a fake version of this card as part of a collection, last year I finally added a real one to my collection and I can tell you that visually the cards are night and day and you can tell which is real. I am very excited about adding this to my collection.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1960 Fleer Sam Salerno

This month’s VCoM is from the 1960 Fleer Football release, but there is more too it besides being vintage. Let me introduce you to one of the most error filled cards that I have ever seen, this 1960 Fleer Sam Salerno. The comedy of errors:

Miscut- Top to bottom

Miscut- Left to right

Miscut- Diamond cut

Yellow color bomb on the front

Missing the black printing plate on the front

Wrong back

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1914 T222 Fatima Turkish Blend Eddie Murphy

This month’s VCoM from straight out of packs of 1914 T222 Fatima Turkish Blend cigarettes. The cards were printed by Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company and used photography while other tobacco companies were still using illustrations of the athletes on their cards. The set is also not a baseball exclusive set, there are also other sports athletes as well as actors. 

I picked up this Eddie Murphy because he was later part of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox team that threw the World Series and I am really drawn to that team. He wasn’t one of the players involved and had no knowledge of the games being thrown so he eventually earned the nickname “Honest Eddie”. 

These cards are rather rare and extremely condition sensitive. They were printed on very thin stock, literally paper thin, and they are larger than the standard tobacco era card of the day at 2.5” x 4.5”, roughly the size of a Tall-Boy style card. So, because of the size you will often see creases and fold marks but the glossy sepia photo more than makes up for the folds in appearance. Mine has a major fold across that someone taped, because it isn't torn I am guessing they did it to add support to the crease area.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1937 Bulgaria Sport / Sorte Nr. Manfred von Richthofen

This month’s VCoM is another Manfred von Richthofen German tobacco card from 1937. You probably are tired of seeing this exact card but trust me they are different. This card is from packs of Bulgaria Sport / Sorte Nr. 16 cigarettes.

OK, it is basically the same card over and over but think about these cards as being similar to the 1909-1911 T206 cards, they were inserted in to various cigarette packs and they each have their own brand on the back with the copy otherwise being the same. If you are wondering, there are 7 total backs and this is my fourth.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1950s Parkhurst Wrestling Togo Brothers

This month’s VCoM are two cards from the 1954-55 & 1955-56 Parkhurst Wrestling sets and both cards are two of the three Togo Brothers.

The first card is the 1954-55 Parkie and it shows Ko Togo (L) and Tosh Togo (R) from a promotional shot. This card has a “Lucky Premium” back instead of the regular 1954-55 back. These backs were instant win cards of sorts and offered mail-away offers where you had to send in the card plus the cost (I am guessing for shipping and handling) and you got the item on the card back. My card is for the Cinderella watch but some of the other items were a flash camera with a 50mm lens ($3.75), a high powered giant field glass ($2.00) and a Hopalong Cassidy boy’s wrist watch ($5.95). When the cards were redeemed for the item they were kept by the company so cards with the Lucky Premium back are not as common as the regular cards.

The second card is the 1955-56 Parkie and shows Tosh Togo (L w/ hammer) and Ko Togo (R w/block). This was a time when wrestling was real but the three were more than wrestlers. Previously I had talked about Tosh Togo (The Great Togo, aka Harold Sakata) being a weightlifter but the other two were master martial artists so they often did other events where they showed off their skills, and I am figuring that this cinder block break was at one of those events.

There were three Togo brothers though none of them were actually related. There was Tosh Togo (Toshiyuki/Harold Sakata), Ko Togo (Kokichi Endo) and Mas Togo (Mas Oyama). Ko Togo and Mas Togo do not have their own cards in either set and I haven’t been able to find any cards featuring Mas at all.

I did come across a picture of the three “brothers” together.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1910 T51 Murad College Series Buchtel Football

This month’s VCoM comes from packs of Murad Cigarettes and is cataloged as 1910 T51 Murad College Series. The set was made up of sports and sporting events so there is quite a variety of colleges and activities.

This is my second T51 Murad card and I selected it because it is football, the other card being baseball. Because it is a popular sport it runs a bit more than cards like tennis and skeet shooting but it wasn’t too bad because it Buchtel University, which is still around but is now known as University of Akron.

Some of the cards around this era faded or chipped away so even though this card is worn it still holds the color of the illustration even down to the detail of the school’s emblem. The back has held the ink too, but there are scuffs and creases, but they don’t deter from the appearance.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1954-55 Parkhurst Wrestling The Great Togo

This month’s VCoM comes from the 1954-55 Parkhurst Wrestling set and is the prequel of the Great Togo card I posted in last December’s VCoM. This set is a little smaller than the follow up 1955-56 Parkhurst Wrestling set, this one is 75 cards.

This card is The Great Togo’s, aka Harold Sakata, aka Tosh Togo, rookie card and as you may have noticed, it is the exact same card as his 1955-56 Parkie card but without the rising sun background. Really the 1954-55 & 1955-56 are nearly identical on the front. The backs were different but the same, if that makes any sense. The 1954-55 backs are vertical with black ink and a small comic while the 1955-56 backs were horizontal, green ink and no comic.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1910 T51 Murad College Series Kentucky Baseball

This month’s VCoM comes from packs of Murad Cigarettes and is cataloged as 1910 T51 Murad College Series. It was a multi-sport set, though some are not really sports, and contains 150 cards with an additional 75 variations for a total set of 225 if you are looking to complete the entire set as released. You’ll find baseball, football and basketball but you will also come across camping and snowshoeing, so the checklist is quite an eclectic grouping and as expected there are colleges and sports that will run a premium.

I picked up a couple of cards from the set and I will start with this baseball card of State University of Kentucky, now known as the University of Kentucky. I guess carrying around a banner saying you suck (SUK) can make the name change a rather easy decision.

In 1910 the State University of Kentucky organized their first athletic teams, so if you think about it this is a SUK RC.

Compared to other baseball cards from the set this one was rather cheap because of the back checklist being marked up. Apparently, the original owner had 16 cards from the 25 cards on the checklist. I don’t mind because as I have said before with vintage cards these types of marks add character. Maybe some day I will do a mini-PC based on the marked off cards, that would be quite the peculiar mini-PC.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1937 Churchman Howlers Napoleon

This month’s VCoM comes from Howlers Tobacco and were issued in packs of Churchman Cigarettes in 1937, it is the standard tobacco era card size and depicts the Little General watching a battle in the background.

The Napoleon card is #10 and there are 40 cards on the checklist that would make sets like Goodwin Champions and Allen & Ginter’s proud. The set is made up of an odd collection of leaders (Napoleon, William the Conqueror, Julius Cesar, etc.), hobbies (gardening, music, etc.), careers (politician, doctor, etc.) and oddities like gravity, fish, stocks & bonds.

I have decided to cut back on non-sports vintage cards unless it is a subject that interests me, like the Red Baron, but a vintage Napoleon card with a great colorful illustration for a low price was difficult to pass up.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1955-56 Parkhurst The Great Togo

This month’s VCoM is The Great Togo from the 1955-56 Parkhurst Wrestling release, a 121-card checklist wrestling set that covered the big named wrestles of the time.

The Great Togo, also know Toshiyuki Sakata or Harold Sakata, may be better known to some as Oddjob in the James Bond film Goldfinger but he was a very accomplished weight lifter and wrestler before he became an actor. Following his time in the US Army during WWII he began lifting weights and went to the 1948 London Olympics where he won a Silver medal in the Light-Heavyweight weightlifting category.

In the early 1950s he began his wrestling career, at times teaming up with Masutatsu Oyama and Kokichi Endo as the Togo Brothers/Family winning 12 championships as an individual and tag-team.

This 1955-56 Parkie is his second-year card with his 1954-55 Parkhurst card being his official rookie card. The odd thing is, I guess a cost cutting choice, but the 54-55 card uses the same exact image but is a plain white background.

This card is in horrible shape and I want to eventually replace it, but it has great colors and you gotta love the look on Sakata’s face. I don’t think I have ever seen a wrestler smiling so big on a card before.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1910 L21 Leather College Pennants

 This month’s VCoM is a trilogy of 1910 L21 Leather College Pennants. The three pendants are for United States Military Academy (West Point/Army), United States Naval Academy (Annapolis/Navy) and the University of Washington.

Similar to the other tobacco cards of the era, these were inserted in to packs of American Tobacco Company packs as an incentive. I am not sure how many Universities were included but there were some interesting choices included; Reserve University, DePauw University and Mount Union University. Even though the University of Arizona was founded in 1885, 25 years before the release of this set, I am unable to find any mention of the school being included in the set which is a bummer.

I picked these three up because of how clean they are, they are in amazing condition with bright colors and no damage. It is fascinating how well the cards from this set have really held up over the years. Some of the cards are condition sensitive with the pennants where white ink was inlaid in the impressions/cuts on the leather have flaked off but the colored pennants do not seem to have the same problems. 

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1949 Topps Magic Corbett & Sullivan

This month’s VCoM is a pair of boxers from the 1949 Topps Magic release. Similar to the 1948 set, the 1949 set was made up of 252 cards from sports and non-sports categories. These are my second and third Magic cards, the first one being the 1948 Topps Magic Billy The Kid I posted last month.

The 1949 set started with Category “A” being Boxing Champions and there were 24 fighters in this category. James Corbett is card #2 and John L Sullivan is #3 on the checklist and what drew me to the cards, besides being unique vintage cards, is that both men fought during the bare-knuckle age. When Corbett and Sullivan fought in 1892 they wore gloves with Corbett winning the championship with a 21^st knockout of Sullivan. This made Sullivan the final bare-knuckle champion and Corbett the first gloved champion.

The Magic cards of this era are condition sensitive with many fading over time and some nearly disappearing completely. Both of these cards are probably a mid-point of the condition sensitive range with some nice dark areas and some detail (more with Sullivan’s card) but there is some fading. I have put all three of my Magic cards in to a binder so hopefully that will halt any further fading.

The categories in the 1949 set includes Football stars (Category C), Actors (Category F) and Aviation Pioneers (Category L) with the big names being Jessie Owens, Clark Gable, Ty Cobb and Amelia Earhart. 

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1948 Topps Magic Billy The Kid

This month’s VCoM comes from one of Topps earliest oddball sets, the 1948 Topps Magic release. The 1948 set was made up of 252 cards from sports and non-sports categories and were quite unique in the fact that the card fronts were blank and you got to “develop” the card yourself in a similar fashion to Polaroid film.

After you opened your pack of Hocus Bubble Gum you took your tiny, stamp sized card and dipped it in water. You then laid the wrapper across the blank front of the card, pressed for 10 seconds and then lifted and voila the card had a picture.

This Billy the Kid card is card #7 on the category “S” checklist, which is the Figures of the Wild West portion of the set. Each category was given a letter or number designation and then the cards were numbered based upon that specific checklist. Category “A” checklist was basketball players, category “B” was football players and this ran through Category “T" for general sports athletes. You never knew who you got until you opened the pack but some of the big names in the set were Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Charles Lindberg, George Patton and this guy Billy the Kid.

These cards are very condition sensitive with many of the images fading over the years but my card is very bold and the details are very clear. I really am not a fan of mini cards and these cards are not much bigger than a US stamp but I will make an exception from time to time and this is one of those exceptions.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1933 Kyriazi Cigaretters Manfred von Richthofen

This month’s VCoM is another German Richthofen card, this one is from a pack of Kyriazi cigarettes in 1933 and like many of my Richthofen cards this one is an illustration of the Baron. But the uniqueness of the card is that this image is not a common pose that you see and I have only seen used (in complete form) on the cover of the German version of his biography Der rote Kampfflieger while the English version of his biography The Red Fighter Pilot uses a more common photo of him wearing a coat and hat and facing in the different direction.

The card is standard tobacco era stock and is the height of the cards of the period but a little bit wider. The colors are beautiful and the card is in wonderful condition but there are two issues that were caused by someone, one intentional and one unintentional.  The card has been trimmed along the left and right borders, there should be a gold border on each side and they are extremely condition sensitive so someone along the way cut off the borders. The second problem was caused by the seller in his attempt to securely pack the card for shipping from Germany. The card was folded inside an index card and surrounded by cardboard that was taped together and it appears that during shipping the cardboard squeezed down around the left edge and pinched the card which caused some of the paper to rip off in the upper left edge.

I did suck it up and not complain or return the card because this card is very rare and I figured this will be a place holder until I can find something in better condition. It would have been easily avoided had the seller put the card in a rigid top loader but was happened can't be undone.

I did a translation of what is on the back and the top paragraph describes the set as having 240 German leaders from 1640 through 1918. The bottom paragraph seems to say something about the card being for a scrapbook and allowing the cigarette dealers permission to use the card.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1889 Kinney Brother's Leader George Washington

Last month I posted a beautiful 1889 N222 Kinney Brothers Martha Washington card but I topped it with this month’s VCoM, Martha’s companion George Washington. This 1889 Kinney Brothers George Washington has even better coloring and I prefer the image of Washington crossing the Delaware River compared to Martha’s eagle bearing a flag across a sunrise (or set).

There is staining along the both side edges and the bottom, the corners are rounded and the card is not as solid as Martha’s card. The stains along the edges carried over on to the back but the checklist is in better shape than the other card.

I don’t want to start going down the conspiracy road but I just noticed that the “A” in Leaders at the top of the back looks an awful lot like the Freemason’s symbol.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1889 N222 Kinney Brother's Leaders Martha Washington

This month’s VCoM is of the first First Lady Martha Washington and comes from 1889 and is part of the 1889 N222 Kinney Brothers Leaders set, which was included in packs of Kinney Brothers cigarette packs like their brand Sweet Caporal.

These cards are just amazingly beautiful, just something you wouldn’t see in anything released in the modern era. I think tobacco and candy cards are generally the most amazing cards illustration-wise. When you consider that this card is 128 years old it has held up amazingly well. The colors are fading but still vibrant, the filigree on the back is still completely visible but there is some paper wear and staining. I got a kick out of the “These cards can be retained” on the bottom of the card, something that does not need to be included these days. The cards are also thick, especially for a tobacco era card, about 35-pt and this one is still solid.  

This card will be difficult to top.