More OLD HOBBY correspondence: an ENDLESS PARADE OF DEALS INCLUDUDING ANOther T206 plank TO Herb ross! DEALS WITH "AUTOGRAPH KING" bill Zekus! Frank nagy, Larry Fritsch etc

This post is illustrated by a group of letters direct from the early days of card collecting and dealing. The letters mostly speak for themselves but, of course, as always, I will throw in a little color!

Herb Ross was one of the all-time great dealers - and, just as importantly, one of the all-time great people in the formative years of the hobby. In the 1970s, he was the “R” of The L & R Card Company, along with Don Lepore. It’s hard to overstate their influence. They practically invented the idea of a premium market for superstars. It’s hard to believe but in an earlier time, collectors and dealers didn’t put much of a premium (if any at all) on the biggest stars from all the classic baseball card sets.  No one played a bigger role in ushering in a new era where Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, and all the other most popular stars became the focus of collectors, eventually trading at a huge premium to commons in vintage sets. The advertising line “Looking for that superstar? Try L & R” appeared countless times in every hobby publication. They advertised everywhere. No one could escape it! Of course, they were totally right about the superstar market being a sleeping giant. In my eyes, they were the spark. Collectors soon appreciated superstars more than ever before; sellers could get more for their star cards than ever before; and the market was changed forever.

This letter is from 1976 and in it Herb and Don are buying a T206 Plank from me for $625. They apparently needed a little time to fully pay and Herb was sending “$500 as the first part of $625 total for the Plank card.”  I was always very accommodating to buyers and found that being flexible about the timing of paying was just good business. 
 
Herb Ross is still collecting by the way! He and his wife Roberta moved to California years ago to be near family, but his passion for the hobby never left. The baseball card business was always a sideline - Herb was a high school principal by day - and one constant through all these years is his enthusiasm for the hobby and his great love of collecting all things Jackie Robinson.
Last year I made a deal with Herb (purchasing an extra item from him). Pictured below is the front and back of his business card with his note, which I include because it’s amazing to see his handwriting is exactly the same!  (I collect Jackie Robinson too so be sure to check with me first before offering anything good to him…) Herb is one of my favorites. Always a gentleman and a scholar. He and his wife (Hi Roberta!) were always the friendliest people. When they were at a convention with a table, which was often, it was like I had family in the room, and I knew I always had a homebase at the show.  
   

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Herb Ross is still collecting by the way! He and his wife Roberta moved to California years ago to be near family, but his passion for the hobby never left. The baseball card business was always a sideline - Herb was a high school principal by day - and one constant through all these years is his enthusiasm for the hobby and his great love of collecting all things Jackie Robinson.
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Last year I made a deal with Herb (purchasing an extra item from him). Pictured below is the front and back of his business card with his note, which I include because it’s amazing to see his handwriting is exactly the same!  (I collect Jackie Robinson too so be sure to check with me first before offering anything good to him…) Herb is one of my favorites. Always a gentleman and a scholar. He and his wife (Hi Roberta!) were always the friendliest people. When they were at a convention with a table, which was often, it was like I had family in the room, and I knew I always had a homebase at the show. ​

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Bill Zekus “The Autograph King”
 
There was no one whose name was more synonymous with advanced Hall of Fame autograph collecting than Bill Zekus. He had it all (just about anyway). I was not an “autograph guy” so our ability to deal was limited. I rarely had anything to sell him but always had interest in buying items that perhaps I could use for deals or were up my alley if he had any. This letter from July 2, 1976 is fascinating because Bill is listing off so many rare signed items for sale. He was first and foremost a collector, but had many duplicates from collections he bought, which he used for trade or resale. The prices may look cheap now (of course they do! These prices are 50 years old!) but they were not cheap then. Bill would much rather trade than sell. The only things I had interest in from him were rare cards or cabinet photos that were signed. In this letter he refers to enclosing a Harry Wright autographed cabinet card and he has it priced at $175. That was just way too much in my opinion and I was not buying it. In fact, I didn’t even care if it was autographed. I just liked cabinet cards and would have been happier if it was not autographed and much cheaper. I didn’t want to pay for autographs! That was not my area of interest. One the other hand, if it wasn’t autographed, Bill probably would not have had it to offer me. (Note: Today this would be worth many thousands).

I only wanted to pay $100 which he would not accept, but he had high hopes that I would be able to round up some rare signed items to trade him. After all, he knew how active I was with cards. Though I tried, at this time I just couldn’t get him signed items he wanted. He did want to sell me the Harry Wright and sure, I wanted it. But to me it was cabinet card. To him it was a signed rarity. Eventually we compromised in between my $100 offer as just a cabinet card (which was a lot at this time for a cabinet card!), and his $175 full retail-plus asking price. I agreed to pay $145. This process, as the date on the second letter shows, took forever! I sent him a check in August. I did eventually find some autographs of interest to him but could not get them for this deal. Bill was more than a just a collector of Hall of Fame autographs. I think of him as the First Super Collector of Hall of Fame autographs in an era where all baseball cards and memorabilia were just starting to be valuable. Looking at his list of extra autographs (which itself was just a tiny percentage of his extras) gives an idea of how advanced he was, how extensive his collection was, and what autographs were valued at by advanced collectors in 1976.       
 

Larry Fritsch​
There weren’t many collectors as sophisticated as Larry Fritsch. And fewer still who collected absolutely everything. Larry was a hard and aggressive negotiator, and make no mistake: he could be very gruff. This was an intimidating combination! I was able to navigate reasonably well, which is not surprising as I always tried to accommodate him and be a pleasure to deal with. Larry Fritsch was a larger-than-life personality, with a huge warehouse with more cards than anyone (literally tens of millions, most in unopened cases and boxes). He had an unbelievably large personal collection that spanned every era and every set, and had knowledge of the sets he was particularly interested in that was second to none. I never saw it but my understanding from him was that he lived on a gigantic farm. Everything about him was big.  Even Larry was big!  As is his legend in the hobby: He was the first fulltime card dealer. That alone is a big deal. And I believe he was the most successful card dealer of all time! He was incredibly smart, dedicated, and had a genuine enthusiasm for card collecting.  Larry was a legend in the hobby when he was active; he is a legend to this day. His contributions have helped shape the hobby as we know it.   

Larry was already a legend even when I first started dealing with him. He knew baseball cards like few others, and he appreciated that I did too. We would talk for hours at a time. I went out of my way to find cards for him. He seemed to have just about everything, yet there were always cards he needed. Probably because he collected everything!  

Below are a few letters from Larry Fritsch. These letters are just a small sample, but they certainly give a glimpse of how involved our deals could be. Larry always sent a letter when he mailed cards or a check. He loved to trade, often more than he loved to buy outright. The 1974 letter is typical - it references so many trades and deals that I have trouble following it all reading it today! 

The two 1976 letters are related to the same deal. In these letters Larry is sending me two checks totaling $400 for a rare T206 Magie error and nine 1951 Topps Team cards. A 1947 Tip-Top Bread card of Evers was also up in the air. Evers was a Detroit Tigers player, which in this era were revered for their extreme rarity (less so today because in the years that followed there were a few substantial finds of Tip-Top Bread Detroit Tigers). Larry was not sure he wanted the Evers for $75 and said he’d let me know. As I recall, he didn’t buy it but instead we worked it into a trade. Deals referenced in passing in just these letters involve cards from these issues: Bell Brand Potato Chips, M116 Sporting Life, T207 Brown Background, 1951 Topps Current All-Stars, 1958 Kahns meat, and 1933 DeLong gum. There aren’t many collectors today who collect (let alone have encyclopedic knowledge) of all of these sets. For Larry, as a collector, this was the tip of the iceberg! As a dealer, the rich tradition of Larry Fritsch Cards, with its roots as the very first fulltime card dealership in the hobby, continues on as a family business to this day.  

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Dr. Lawrence Kurzrok
Dr. Kurzrok was a giant collector from an era way before my time. By the time I made his acquaintance by phone, he didn’t really collect anymore, but he had a massive collection and knew everything about cards. And he loved to talk with me about cards! He certainly didn’t need to sell anyone anything, but he enjoyed dealing with me. He would dig out whatever he thought would be interesting and offer cards to me. Everyone who knew of him – and there were many - wanted to buy cards from him, but in retrospect I think I was the only one he actually sold cards to. He just got a kick out of me and really enjoyed encouraging my learning about vintage cards and dealing. After Dr. Kurzrok passed away, his wife told me how much he loved my enthusiasm and talking cards with me. The Kurzroks were “high society” people. Dr. Kurzrok had been an extremely successful New York doctor before moving to Florida to retire. They were very well-to-do, did a lot of entertaining, and hosted a lot of fancy dinner parties. Mrs. Kurzrok explained to me that even when they were having a formal dinner with company, if I called (which was often), Dr. Kurzrok would stand up from the head of the table, apologize to his guests, and explain that he had to excuse himself to go speak about baseball cards with his “little friend.” I had no idea.   

Dr. Kurzrok was an extremely serious collector in the 1940s and 1950s and sometime in the 1960s, I believe, he slowed down. But when he was collecting, he bought everything. He liked it all! Nonsports and sports. And when he collected, I got the impression that money was no object. Which helps explain how he had so much “stuff.”   

I never met Dr. Kurzrok in person, but would speak to him regularly and he would also write frequently. On any given day I could get a postcard or letter from Dr. Kurzrok offering me some rare or obscure cards, sometimes in quantities to test me! I would always just call of course, and I always bought it all!  The letters and checks below are just a small sample. It is amusing to see that the letter and checks below represent my buying over thirty uncut sheets of 1925 W504 Universal Toy cards (each sheet representing a set of Dodgers, Giants, or Yankees). Individual cut W504 cards were well known and scarce, and for some reason almost all that collectors saw were individual Dodgers players (plus the larger team card at the top of the sheet). The Yankees and Giants players were much rarer, virtually unknown, and all team sets in uncut sheets were pretty much unknown. Every time you see an uncut sheet of W504 cards, it’s a virtually certain bet it came from Dr. Kurzrok. Interestingly, there was also a 1925 W504 Washington Senators team set. A very small handful of individual W504 Senators are known to exist. Dr. Kurzrok had no W504 Senators, and that is why they are the rarest of all, and why no uncut sheets of W504 Senators are known to exist.  
 

Frank Nagy
Frank Nagy was the King of Baseball Cards in his day. In addition to being a dedicated advanced collector in an era when there were very few, he bought a couple of the very biggest collections ever assembled, long before cards were valuable in the early days of organized card collecting. He was a genuine collector, and he was well known for going out of his way to encourage and help other collectors. Frank never got the hang of doing deals by phone. He was old school. Most of our dealings were in person at shows, but a few were by mail, and he insisted on writing letters. I would just call him, of course.
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In the letter below, Frank was sending me a couple of strip cards of Babe Ruth, asking if I wanted Babe Ruth postcards, and, most importantly, asking me to sell him uncut sheets of W504 Dodgers. Dr. Kurzrok had found seven more sheets of Dodgers that were on the way to me but not yet in hand. I had mentioned this to Frank, and he very much wanted to buy them. I told him I would sell them to him for 25 dollars each when I got them. He REALLY wanted them (I can’t blame him; it was a very good deal, and I really wanted to give Frank good deals). He did get them, and as he requested, I did “send them at once” as soon as I received them. Since I just wrote about Dr. Kurzrok’s W504 sheets above, I thought it would be fun to include this W504-sheet-related letter from Frank Nagy, one of card collecting’s great legends.

Stanley McClure
I thought this was an amusing find: In my earliest auctions, bids were placed by mail. Hard to believe! But that’s how it was done! This auction was in 1975 and the bidder was Stanley McClure, one of the great super old-time collectors. Everyone liked Stanley. He was old even in the 1970s (seriously old!) but enjoyed collecting like a kid. It was always fun to find a card that Stanley needed, allowing him to cross it off his ever-present want list (yes, in those advanced collectors had want lists). 

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Robert Ball
Here's another auction bid letter..This one from 1973! The bidder was longtime collector Robert Ball, who in later years focused his attention on S81 Tobacco Silks and eventually had not only a perfect set, but the only known S81 uncut sheet!  

Bert Randolph Sugar
I also bid in auctions. I was the winning bidder on a couple of lots in a rare auction in 1978 held by my good friend Bert Sugar (1936-2012). Below is a rare letter/invoice from this important pioneer! A book could be written about Bert, who had an immense impact on many collecting fields. He was the driving force behind the ground-breaking Sports Collectors Bible in the 1970s, and countless other endeavors, many involving collectibles, as well as doing other things like earning a place in the Boxing Hall of Fame (for his monumental contributions as a preeminent boxing writer and historian), writing dozens of books, buying and running Ring Magazine, and acting in films (always as himself with his trademark hat and cigar). Here’s a link to a tribute to Bert:
Bert Sugar Had Impact on Cards, Collectibles Too

Mort Shanerman
Mort Shanerman was one of the few “big autograph guys” in the 1970s. Everyone knew Mort and had great dealings with him. He had various sub-collections, but his primary collecting interest was fascinating: he was determined to get an autograph of EVERY SINGLE Yankees player EVER. I don’t know if he ever completed the collection, but no one beat the bushes and networked more to assemble a world-class collection of this type than Mort.
Eventually he sold his entire Yankees collection in one shot to Barry Halper (which is not surprising because not only did Barry appreciate opportunity to buy truly great collections lock-stock-and-barrel, he loved the Yankees). I last heard from Mort about fifteen years ago. He still had great interest in collecting and still had items from his early collecting days. Always a pleasure, Mort is someone I remember fondly. I’m including this letter not because it documents some especially entertaining deal, but to give a shout to one of the good guys in the hobby who had such an unusual and ambitious collecting specialty, and who was so active in the collecting world decades ago.

T205 and T206 Tobacco Cards…25 Cents Each! 
This letter will be amusing to many as it shows how ridiculously cheap T205 and T206 Gold Border Tobacco cards could be in the 1970s. Twenty-five cents each? That was cheap even then…I was giving him a particularly good deal at the time because he was a young collector who called me (my kind of guy!)  

Larry Gladstone
Larry Gladstone has been one of the hobby’s most knowledgeable (and personable!)  collector/dealers since the 1970s. He is a pioneer from the earliest days of the hobby’s explosive growth and is still active to this day under his eBay handle “Painthistorian.” Larry is also one of my oldest and dearest friends for the past FIFTY YEARS and counting (that’s right: 50 years!) We practically grew up together in the hobby. I think of him like family (the crazy part of the family) and it has been a joy to share growing up and becoming adults over so many decades. Even our kids became friends. Larry has a beautiful family and is now a grandfather. His ping-pong and 500 gin-rummy skills are weak, but his integrity and character are strong. (Small note: Larry and I have a longstanding disagreement about who is the ping-pong and 500 gin-rummy champion between the two of us. I am. Don’t listen to him if he says otherwise.)
 
What is SO GREAT about this “letter on index cards” from Larry is that it was the VERY FIRST communication we ever had. Even better, he had no idea I was also a kid and called me “Mr. Lifson.” To me, this is extremely amusing (one 15-year-old kid calling another 15-year-old kid “Mr.”)  When I got this two-index-card “letter” with his mail-in auction bids, I thought, “Who the heck is this? Look at all these card types listed. And a handwritten ad to look for his future ads. Very unusual.” (Please note, as can be seen, that Larry, ever the salesman, was even kind enough to provide an arrow from the first index card directing me to the second index card). I called Larry the very day I received this, and we immediately became great friends - and have been ever since.   
(One final note...Larry, your bid of $8.28 for the 1949 Leaf of Jackie Robinson...really, that's just highway robbery!) 

I am still recovering from Larry’s letter above, but have to somehow wrap this post up, because I could go on forever and never actually post any of this…
 
So I close with a flyer I found among my old correspondence that somehow escaped getting thrown out. This flyer advertises the very first Philadelphia Baseball Card and Sports Memorabilia Show, which in its earliest days was held at Spring Garden College in Chestnut Hill, and within a couple of years moved to Willow Grove (which is why the show was known for decades as “The Willow Grove Show”). From the very first, this became one of the most exciting and important card conventions in the country. It played a huge role in the hobby’s growth in the 1970s and 1980s (and beyond) and provided a venue that helped make the  hobby more accessible and enjoyable to thousands of collectors.
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That’s a wrap! I hope you have enjoyed reading this incredibly long post as much as I have enjoyed writing it!
Robert Lifson