Technically, It’s Still Autumn
December 8th, 2011 by slangon

Which means there’s still time to enjoy some Leafs.

And no, that’s not a typo. It’s more of a pun. And a really bad one. As opposed to good puns. Uh. Nevermind.

Anyway, like any other card collector out there, when I’m trolling around on eBay, there’s a few particular key phrases that I usually type in just to see what they got. For me, those phrases include, but are not limited to “1960 topps”, “1969 deckle edge”, “1956 topps”, “1953 topps”, “keith hernandez” and “vintage mets”. One other phrase that I search for, and have had some success with in the past is “poor lot”. Obviously, it helps if you just search in the cards category, but sometimes it’s fun to see what other poor lots there are in other categories.

A couple of weeks ago, one of these poor lots caught my eye, it was still cheap and it had free shipping. I plugged in a bid and forgot about it until I got an email letting me know that my bid was enough to win, with 2 pennies to spare. What did that high bid plus 2 pennies snare me, you ask? A couple of, shall we say, slightly left of perfect 1948 Leaf cards, including this one.

I guess you can see for yourself what puts this one in the poor category. It’s almost a shame in a way, too because outside of that tape and those team updates, this card is in impressive shape for being over 60 years old. I was surprised how thick the card board on these suckers is, which I suppose has to do with why (outside of that tape and those team updates) it is in such good shape. I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised. People just built stuff better back then. The color is also really good it too. It scanned a little darker and muddier than what it is in person. The color registration also lines up much better than what I’ve seen on other examples from this set that I’ve seen online.

By the way, there’s something sort of interesting going on with that graffiti. As near as I can make out, the writing up top that’s crossed out used to say “Washington” which makes sense since Jerry Priddy played for the Senators. What makes that interesting is that Jerry played for Washington before he played for the Browns. I’ve got plenty of cards in my collection that have a players new team written on them, but I’ve never seen one that had a players previous team written in. What makes that even interestinger, is that Jerry also played for the Yankees prior to coming to the Browns, but the kid who owned this card chose not to include New York in his notes. I also wonder what possessed them to write in the team he was on before the team he is pictured as a member of, cross out that team, and then write in the team that the player got traded to.

You’ll often see this set referred to as 1948 Leaf, 1949 Leaf or 1948-49 Leaf, which can get a little confusing. Apparently, this set was issued in 1949, but the copyright date on many, but not all, of the cards read 1948, as is the case with Jerry here. I haven’t really found any explanation as to why that is. Perhaps they started designing the set in 1948 but weren’t able to get it out until 1949? That seems weird to me since it seems like changing the copyright date would be a fairly easy fix, even in pre-computer design days. Also, if you look at which cards have 1948 as opposed to 1949 dates, there isn’t much rhyme or reason to it. I would think if it was just a matter of not getting the set done in time, all the 1949 dates would be toward the end.

This set is also skip numbered like crazy. The last card is #168, but there’s only 98 cards in the set, with a handful of variations thrown in for good measure. Oh, and 46 of those are short printed. Geez, kids must’ve gone out of their skulls trying to complete this set back in the day.

One Response to “Technically, It’s Still Autumn”

  1. Great card from a great set. Just started collecting them myself and couldn’t be happier with how great the cards look in person. And the skip numbering is beyond awesome. It reminds me of the story of the high school kids who released three sheep into their school as a prank. They numbered the sheep 1, 2, and 4, and the teachers spent days looking for the sheep with the #3 on it.

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