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(continued from c3)Though several exhibitors seemed to have emptiedwhatever they had found in their attics onto their tables,most booths did have something to do with sports. One man collected ballplayers’ autographs; another specialized inteams’ yearbooks; a third was taking orders for a souvenirplaque of Secretariat.But mixed in with those peddlers of assorted junk were a few men who offered the visitor what he had come looking for. The youngest of the sports card collectors at the show t was Keith Olbermann, a fourteen-year-old from Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. and a regular columnist for Sports Scoop, a magazine for collectors.When Keith was younger, his mother, a baseball fan, had “turned him on” to‘the sport, but he was never very interested in collecting cards. “Then I got a pack of cards at a birthday party once,” he said, “and that got me started.”It was the “human aspect” of baseball cards that appealed to him. “If I had a choice between collecting coins, stamps, and cards, I’d choose cards. A stamp just has a picture of a temple or something on it.” for Keith, cards are “more personal.”x *Keith reached into the plastic case beside him and pulled out a card printed in 1909 with a picture of Nap Lajoie, an infielder for the Cleveland Indians. There were 523 cards in that 1909 series (called the “T-series” by collectors), which came, not in packages of bubble gum, but in packages of cigarettes. Card number 206 in the T-Series, a picture of Pitssburgh shortstop Honus Wagner which came in packages of Sweet Caporal cigarettes, is the rarest card of all. Only thirty or so copies of “The Card” were ever • printed, and of that number, just thirteen have been located. One belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another was recently purchased by a private collector for $1100.According to one story, Wagner, who was a superb player and undoubtedly a favorite with the kids, didn’t want his name associated with a product as vile as cigarettes, so he requested the company to stop after printing only thirty cards.Ultimately, Keith, who also owns Cracker Jack cards from 1914-15, would like to add “The Card” to his collection, but his more immediate goal is to acquire all the cards made by Topps, the gum company which has been the major trading card distributor since the 1950’s.A young boy interrupted him. “How much for this?” the boy asked, pointing to a souvenir Yankee program.“That’s a dollar,” Keith answered.“How about this Met program?”“That’s sixty-five...and this one is a quarter.”The boy paid for the two programs, Keith making a comfortable profit on the deal.Mike “I’ll Give You MY Card” Aronstein, the friendly, talkative head of the Card Memorabilia Associates, Ltd., had a large display of cards, photographs, and prints spread out over two long tables. Aronstein started Ncollecting cards in 1951. “I was the crazy kid who used to trade twenty-five for one—not flip them like the other kids.” His father, a stampt collector, wanted Mike to collect stamps too, but Mike’s heart was elsewhere. Nowhe owns over 40,000 baseball cards, which he keeps in boxes and albums at his home. Four years ago, though, Aronstein formed The Card Memorabilia Associates, Ltd. and found that there was money to be made in selling cards.Aronstein, who was also pushing advance copies of TheGreat American Basebal Card Flipping, Trading andBubble Gum Book by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris' (Little, Brown, $7.95), noted that baseball cards were much more popular than cards for football, hockey, and basketball. “The football market,” he said, “is nil.” He specializes in making color copies of the older cards, the T-Only thirty or so copies of “The Card” were printed. One was recently purchased by a private collector for $1100.series, and does most of his business by mail, through ads placed in Sports Scoop and other trade publications.A pair of battered baseball spikes with “SWO-14” on the flaps of the tongues sat on the table next to Aronstein’s. “They’re Ron Swoboda’s spikes,” said the young womanbehind the table. “My brother is the Yankee batboy and Swoboda gave them to him. We’re selling them for $20. We just sold Sparky Lyle’s for thirty.”In another part of the room, Jack Wallim sat quietlybehind a table covered with small, neat packs of baseball cards. Wallim, a tool and dye worker who came to NewYork all the way from Chicago for the show, has only been interested in cards for about a year and a half. He startedsaving scorecards from major league teams, though, in 1957, because he thought they were “kinda neat.” “I’d buythem for ten cents and sell them for a dollar.” Sometime later, a relative gave him a cigar box filled with old cards, and he began to sell and trade them too. “I try not to get too attached to it,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s like anything else. You make it pay for itself.”One of the many young boys who spent the afternoon shopping at the show came up to Bruce Yeko’s table and picked up a Sandy Koufax card from 1964. “How much is this?” he asked, a little frightened by Yeko’s blunt look. “Seventy-five cents,” said Yeko. He took the boy’s dollar and made change.Unlike Aronstein and-Wallim, who have other jobs and sell cards on the side, Bruce Yeko works full-time dealing in trading cards. He is the head of Wholesale Cards, Inc., a mail-order company which has over fifteen million cards in stock. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Yeko worked as an accountant, but was later fired. In 1957, he began to sell cards, and has since built up the buisness to the point that he now makes“a very healthyliving.” Yeko’s company, the first and largest of its kind, also puts out a catalogue recognized as authoritative by other collectors. By setting the prices in the catalogue, Yeko, in effect, controls the entire trading card market.' * ' * ■ i I J. .r*. ^Across the room from Yeko, an old man in a yellow shirt sat by himself behind one of the smallest tables in the hall.On top of the table, copies of Who’s Who In Baseball going back through the 1940’s were arranged in a neat stack in chronological order. One shopper, after flipping through the guidebooks, asked the old man for a book from a year that didn’t seem to be/in the display. “I don’t have that one,” said the old man. “I used to get them for 65c every year, but I can’t buy them anymore.” He shook his head slowly. “The prices have gone up so much...” Someone else came over and picked up a green, hard-covered book which was wrapped in clear plastic—the 1922 edition of the Spalding Guide to Baseball. “How much?” he asked. “Twenty-two dollars,” said the old man, knowing that no one would buy it at that price. The prospective customer put it down and walked away.Paul Gallegher had the most conspicuous exhibit in the hall, right in front of the entrance. A short, bald man from Brooklyn, whose clean, white T-shirt was just large enough to cover his huge stomach, Gallegher was doing a brisk business.A man in his thirties showed Gallegher a stack of cards from the late ’40’s and asked him, “How much you give me for a Joe D.?” Gallegher took a quick look. ‘Ten cents,” he said. The other man began to dicker nicely. “I know they’re hard to come by...” “Yeah,” said Gallegher, thinking it over “I really ought to go higher.”Gallegher’s white-haired wife sat at the other end of the table behind a small mountain of baseball cards from the mid-60’s. “These are a penny,” she said in a grandmother’s voice. “He does it to give the young kids a break, to get them started.”Beside the exit, three boys, none of them more than nine or ten years old, were selling sodas. “Hey, sodas!” they called out, holding up the cans. “Sodas—twenty-five cents! ’ ’
Newspaper Details
New York Columbia Spectator
New York, New York, US
Thu, Oct 11, 1973
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
NY, USA 04 Dec 2019
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