Card Dealing In The Old Days: Buying and selling 50 T204 Ramly Tobacco Cards 50 Years Ago!

​Looking through boxes I have found so much correspondence and many checks involving buying and selling cards back in the 1970s and 1980s. I thought it would be fun to post a few as they really give the flavor of what it was like in the early days as I experienced it. Many of the people that show up in these old papers are legends in the hobby known to all. Some are less known today as they have been gone for so long but in their day were universally known as among the most legendary and active collectors of their era.

​Here’s a postcard I received (one of many!) from Dr. Lawrence Kurzrok. I can’t read the exact date of the postmark but can see the year is 1974. In this postcard Dr Kurzrok, who was always very encouraging and kind to me, is offering me fifty T204 Ramly Tobacco cards for the princely sum of $480 plus $2 for insurance and registered mail postage. This was no doubt a good deal even then. Dr. Kurzrok was always very fair to me, encouraging my interest in knowledge of cards and business. I bought everything he ever offered me. EVERYTHING! And always did well. I really didn’t have any idea how much “stuff” Dr. Kurzrok had until after he had passed away. Let me put it this way: He could have sold me cards week in, week out at our active pace of dealing for hundreds of years! Really. He had that much! Dealing with him was as much an education in vintage cards as good business. He wanted me to do well, and wanted me to buy his cards and resell them and come back for more. I didn’t know I was the only one he did this with. I was just a little kid who loved learning about baseball cards, loved buying and selling cards, and had a phone. Dr Kurzrok took a shine to me, really as much a teacher as a supplier of cards for me to sell. He could have sold his cards to anyone. He didn’t even have to sell any cards. He was very wealthy. We were a great “team” for years before he passed away and looking back I certainly owe him a great debt for all he did for me. 

Usually when I happened to have a surviving old letter or check relating to a card purchase, I have no idea what happened to the cards. Who can remember? I’ve done tens of thousands of deals starting with older cards in the fourth grade. That’s over 50 years of dealing. But in this case in the same box with the postcard from Dr Kurzrok, I found the answer to what happened to these T204s. Here’s a letter from Don McPherson, one of the most respected and prominent vintage baseball card collectors of the 1960s through the 1980s, dated May 13, 1975, where he is sending me a check for $800 for 50 T204 Ramlys and 5 T207s:

​Don was a meteorologist, as I recall, when he wasn’t collecting cards. Many years later I did have the opportunity to purchase a few things from him that I specialized in. I know we discussed his Cracker Jack set (maybe he had 1914 and 1915 and was willing to sell one because I was offering so much). I can’t even remember buying it but I assume I did. I do remember making a deal with him for a big group of Goudey sheets. Don bought these direct from the big Goudey Files Find of 1969 and, like everything else, kept them. Some items like 1914-15 Cracker Jacks and Goudey sheets, enjoyed such a huge surge in value that I was able to make offers that made collectors take note. Don had no interest in selling his Goudey sheets or anything else but when I offered him a fortune for his sheets, he surprised me and himself when he said “I think that’s crazy but….OK, for that price, you can have them.”  I actually got on a plane and picked them up personally rather than risk them being hurt in packaging or the mail. From his perspective, he still had his Goudey sets so in a way these were duplicates. So he could “have his cake and eat it too.”   It was a perfect deal for everyone. Don had practically everything. Exhibit cars, PCL cards, the ‘meat and potato” Topps, Bowman, Goudey, Play Balls, as well as tobacco cards, 19th century cards, regionals…obscure W cards and caramel cards…it went on forever! In his ear cards weren’t so expensive. A collector could collect everything if he wanted to. And that’s what Don did! Don was an older gentleman when I dealt with him. He was a rarity in that he was an advanced collector who bridged the gap from when almost all vintage cards were literally worth pennies to when they were real money, an active buyer all along the way. Not “real money” by today’s standards now that everything is worth a fortune. But big money for the times. Even for 50 T204 Ramlys, $800 was a lot to spend in 1975!

When Don passed away his extremely advanced collection was handled for the family by legendary card scholar/dealer/auctioneer Lew Lipset. There was fierce competition for big collections “back in the day” and the few big dealers (it was a much smaller world in the old days) were always at each others throats. We all hated each other! Even though I was a competitor and would have loved to have handled the collection myself, frankly even I had to admit that Lew Lipset was the ideal person to do justice to this collection due to his encyclopedic knowledge of cards and every nuance of Don’s sophisticated collection. It's not a coincidence that Lipset wrote the self-published Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards three volume set, which is highly regarded to this day and which people who really know cards and hobby history credit with not just promoting interest in vintage cards, but elevating the scholarly approach to researching and documenting cards.     
 
I’ve rambled enough for this post, so I’ll wrap it up here and move on to finding the next letter, check, or story that might be interesting to write about. 
 
I hope you enjoyed reading this “old time hobby” post! I had fun writing it!
 
Robert Lifson