The Story of Mario DeMarco’s Fabulous Original Callahan Hall Of Fame Artworks

Starting in the early to mid 1970s, I was buying from and trading with (and learning a lot in the process from!) one of the great old-time dealers of the early days of organized collecting: Tom Collier. (Interesting footnote: Tom was Mike Aronstein’s partner in the very earliest days of TCMA, which originally stood for “Tom Collier Mike Aronstein”. When Tom bowed out, Mike continued on and while the company was still known as TCMA, the letters now stood for “The Card Memorabilia Associates”.  (There must have been some serious brainstorming to come up with a new name matching the TCMA letters!)
 
I loved dealing with Tom. Many rare items and sets I was shown for the very first time by him. W600s, Duke cabinets, T200 premiums…dealing with him was an education. He lived in Maryland. My Dad - and I can’t even believe he did this but he did - actually drove me all the way from the suburbs of Philadelphia to some remote place in Maryland to meet and deal with Tom Collier in person. Dad stayed in the car and waited. One time I remember my Dad AND my Grandmother sitting in the car outside.  For HOURS - while I made deals with Tom. 
 
Eventually I could drive to there myself. In between being driven and driving,  I remember taking a bus once, but can’t remember exactly how I got to his house (I must have taken a cab the last few miles). 
 
On one of these many excursions, Tom showed me a few original artworks from the Callahan Hall of Fame set. These were created by an artist named Mario DeMarco. I thought these artworks were fantastic, with such great detail. The art was somehow made dot-by-dot, which I later learned was a very unusual and time-consuming process. I made a deal for whatever Callahan artworks Tom had. There were only a few. Tom told me he got them directly from the artist and that there were more if I wanted but he didn’t have the artist’s contact information. 

When I got home I noticed that there was an ink stamp on the back of one of the artworks with Mario DeMarco’s name and address. Of course, this stamp was from 1950, more than 25 years earlier, so the address probably wasn’t good anymore. But….who knew without checking? I called information and within minutes I was speaking to…,Mario DeMarco himself! 
 
Here is the letter he sent me after my call in which I told him how I found him and expressed interest in buying more Callahan card artworks if they were available. The answer was YES. In fact he was extremely pleased I was interested in his artwork and he was enthusiastic about selling them. He had to check to see what he had, price them, and get back to me. When he did, I bought them ALL. Interestingly, included were artworks of some players that were not issued. These unissued card artworks featured players that had not yet been inducted into the Hall of Fame when the card project was ongoing and so did not warrant inclusion in the Callahan set (which was issued between 1950 and 1956, updated with the new inductees every year). 

When all these artworks had been purchased, I was kind of disappointed there were no more. Inspired by the unissued card artworks, I came up with the idea of offering to pay for artworks of players that had yet to be created. Mario found this very amusing and he was THRILLED to do this. Artworks of any player could be created. We picked great stars and Hall of Famers whose careers were active during or after the years the Callahan set was issued. That’s how there came to be artworks (all of which are out there somewhere) for more modern stars such as Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron as well as many others. They were still time-consuming so there was a big delay for each new batch. Mario was always a true gentleman and I very much enjoyed our dealings. 
 
Interesting story Mario DeMarco told me: where signatures appeared pasted in the backgrounds of most of the original card artworks, these were REAL signatures. They sure didn’t look like real signatures, but that’s because he drew OVER them with some special dark ink, totally covering them, so the signatures would show up well on the cards In fact, this is why some cards in the Callahan set (the early stars) did not have signatures as part of the artwork at all. It wasn’t random. Mario didn’t have cut signatures of those players!  Easy to say “why couldn’t he just find a signature to copy” but this was his process. 

When I was going through a recently found pile of old bank papers, I found the letter as well as countless checks and money orders to Mario. I must have sent him thousands of dollars. Here are just a couple of the checks; there are many more. I must have kept him very busy in his spare time for quite a while. 
 
As noted in his letter, all this money went to a great cause: helping to put his son and daughter through business school. Today school costs a fortune, but back then a few thousand dollars (my guess of what I sent him in total) was a lot of money and made a meaningful dent in the tuition bills. 
 
Mario DeMarco was a highly respected and extremely accomplished professional illustrator. His work appeared in everything from Life magazine to comic books in a career that spanned an incredible 70 years. He always had a special soft spot for baseball history and the collecting world has always had a special appreciation for his art. 
 
We don’t see these Mario DeMarco Callahan card artworks often these days but every once in a while one or two appear at auction. They are all out there somewhere. When you see one, know that Mario personally sold it, and all of them - I think everyone last one - passed through my hands enroute to finding homes in various collections over the years! 
 
I have more checks that represent stories I hope will be worth writing about and reading. I hope you have enjoyed this otherwise long-lost story from the early days of the hobby!

Robert Lifson

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