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Anyone got any info on 1953 brown and bigelow babe Ruth?

I was searching for babe Ruth cards and saw one in psa 9. They seem Inexpensive compared to other 1950's babe Ruth cards.
Are they worth collecting? Any value in them in high grade?

Comments

  • NickMNickM Posts: 4,896 ✭✭✭
    Brown & Bigelow used an artist (Bill Medcalf) who also created many calendars of the era to do artwork of several baseball legends (Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Wagner, Connie Mack, and John McGraw) to appear on the reverse of playing cards. These were marketed to merchants to be customized with company contact info below the baseball picture. There is a huge variety of sponsoring merchants found on these cards, and I know of no serious attempt to catalog the sponsor varieties. Most of the ones I have seen were from independent businesses in the Midwest.
    Complete decks are regularly found, and carry some premium.
    The cards are relatively easy in high grade, because they had rounded corners.
    I personally believe, based on the presence of Cuban winter league baseball schedules from 1951 with both the Ruth and Gehrig artwork on their reverses and MLB team schedules from 1952 with the Connie Mack artwork on their reverses, that the Brown & Bigelow sets were issued at least as early as 1951, though the standard cataloguing says 1953-55.
    Ruth seems to be the commonest player found. PSA 9s of Ruth were selling for $10-$15 the last time I tracked this set, with PSA 9s of Gehrig and Cobb selling for around $10, and the other three being very thinly traded but prices often being in the same range. Raw high-grade cards sell for only a couple dollars apiece or less.

    Nick
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