Vintage Card Of The Month: 1933 Goudey Charlie Gehringer

What better way to celebrate the MLB All-Star Game than select a 6x All-Star for this month’s Vintage Card of the Month?

 

This month I am going with Charlie Gehringer, the pride of Detroit. The card spells his name "Charley" but he actually spelled it "Charlie" and signed his autographs "Chas.". Over his 18 year career, all with the Tigers, he had a .320 batting average, 2,839 hits, 184 home runs, 6 All-Star selections, an AL MVP (1937), an AL Batting Championship (1937), 3 AL Pennants and 1 World Series Championship (1935). Gehringer was almost automatic when it came to hitting, Lefty Gomez called him the Mechanical Man, Doc Cramer said “You wind him up Opening Day and forget him” and Mickey Cochrane said “Charlie says Hello on Opening Day, Goodbye on Closing Day and in between hit .350”

 

This was the first 1933 Goudey card that I ever bought, besides being Gehringer, because of the history and wear on the card. On the front right between the “Charley” and “Gehringer” is a pin hole. The reason I enjoy the vintage cards is because of the history attached, I just imagine a kid my son’s age pulling this card out of a gum pack in 1933 and tacking it up in their room. Besides rounded corners and 80 years of wear the card looks pretty good, it has stood the test of time.

 

The back is a different story, besides the pin hole right through the card number the back has scuffing at the top and staining all over but otherwise it is still legible and has strong colors.

 

The 1939 Goudey baseball cards, designate R319 in catalogs, is one of my favorite vintage cards. The colors and illustrations are so bright and they are still pretty easy to find. Lower grade cards of lesser known player can be found under $25, the big name players run in the thousands. A top graded Ruth or Gehrig can cost you the price of a car possibly even as high as $50,000-70,000.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1933 Goudey Lou Gehrig

The last day of the month and I came across two realizations today, one… I had not posted a Vintage Card of the Month post and two… I have never posted my 1933 Lou Gehrig Goudey as the Vintage Card of the Month (serious oversight by me).

 

For years baseball cards had been included in tobacco products and candy products but besides the 1909-11 T206 set no other pre-war set stands the test of time like the 1933 (and 1934) Goudey cards.

 

In 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, the Goudey Gum Company decided to include a baseball card with each stick of gum, becoming the first company to include cards with gum, in hopes of getting kids to buy their gum with the few coins they were able to collect. The set was heavy on stars with a number of players having multiple cards including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The set became known as the 1933 Goudey Baseball Cards set, designated as R319 in catalogs.

 

Lou Gehrig is one of my idols, he was honest and sincere. He actually cared about family, fans and his teammates. He is probably known more today for his consecutive games streak but he was much more than that.

 

In 1920, when he was 17 years old, his high school team traveled to Chicago to play a game in Wrigley Field, he knocked a grand slam out of the park (literally). After high school he earned a football scholarship to Columbia University but he only played football his freshman year, in his sophomore year he played First Base and Pitcher for Columbia and in a game in 1923 game he struck out 17 batters. Pro teams were knocking down his door to sign him; he ended up signing with the hometown Yankees (so he could give his parents the signing bonus because they couldn’t afford their bills) and 2 months after signing his contract he was in the big leagues. In 1925 he went in to a game to replace a struggling Wally Pipp at First Base, the first game of his 2,130 consecutive games streak.

 

Over 17 years he played through injuries, including getting hit in the head three times, because he did not want to let his teammates down. In May 1939, after struggling in recent games, he approached Joe McCarthy, the Yankees manager, and said he was benching himself for the good of the team. He retired a month later, a week before the 1939 All-Star Game. He died two years later, 16 years to the day after he replaced Pipp at First Base.

 

He played for the Yankees from 1923 through 1939, just some of his records of note:

2 AL MVP Awards

8 World Series Championships (counting 1939)
1934 AL Batting Title and Triple Crown winner
.340 career batting average ranks him as 17^th overall
.447 On-Base percentage ranks him 5^th overall
1,995 hits ranks him 5^th overall
493 home runs ranks him 26^th overall
Elected to the MLB Hall of Fame 6 months after his retirement in a special election
Jersey #4 retired by the Yankees

 

This card is not the oldest card in my collection but it is my favorite card by far. I picked this card up in 2006 from 707 Sportscards, their web site is ugly as sin but their prices are pretty decent for vintage singles.

 

Vintage Card of the Month: 1933 Goudey Adam Comorosky

This month’s vintage card of the month comes from one of my favorite vintage sets, the 1933 Goudey set. A couple of months back I assisted a reader, Phil, who needed help identifying a collection of vintage cards. He was helping one of his associates who had received the cards from a family member and I have to admit it was a beautiful collection of both sports and non-sports mainly from the tobacco era. He recently sent me this card to thank me for the help.

 

Adam Comorosky had a 10-year career, but what most would consider a “quiet” type of career. He spent 8 years with the Pirates where he played with future Hall of Famers Paul Waner, Lloyd Waner and Pie Traynor, even making it to the 1927 World Series against the dreaded New York Yankees and Murder’s Row. In 1930 he had his best year, hitting .313 with 23 Triples, a feat (Triples in a season) that was not matched for almost 20 years. He finished up his final two years with the Cincinnati Reds where he played with four more future Hall of Famers; Chick Hafey, Jim Bottomley, Ernie Lombardi and Kiki Culyer. His claim to fame is that he is the only National League outfielder to have two unassisted double plays in season.

 

The card shows its age, you can tell that the card was in a kid’s collection and was probably pulled out and passed around. One thing that about these older gum cards is that you know that they were owned by kids, I have some with pin holes where they were hung up on a wall and another that has writing on it. It is the character that you get to love about these sets.

 

I noticed that Comorosky’s hat is red with a blue “P”, the Pirates hats were actually the opposite color with a blue hat and a red “P”. The other Pirate players in the set all have the correct hat colors; Comorosky is the only one with the reversed color.