a museum collection

i have never been to the national baseball hall of fame, but i have been to a couple of baseball themed "museums". one was in a souvenir shop near the old hhh metrodome in downtown minneapolis. their big draw was a babe ruth signed baseball along with a bunch of twins memorabilia. and, while not a baseball themed museum, i did see a nice 1952 topps mickey mantle card at the smithsonian complex in washington dc about 17 years ago or so.

hobby vip larry fritsch had a baseball card museum in cooperstown for a few years, and there were cards associated with this endeavor as i learned at a recent show. i found this 1988 card

in one of the bargain bins i dug through. the back of the card relays an interesting story regarding the 1909 t206 honus wagner card that made its way to fritsch's collection

$1300 in 1974 was a lot of money, but...

the cards in my collection that are associated with museums come from topps' museum collection releases, like this 2024 steve garvey autograph card

and this 2022 jackie robinson card

i do have a dover reprint of the wagner card somewhere, but i'd like to see one in person. i suppose that the national is the most likely place to do so these days since the fritsch museum has been closed for over 30 years.

i went down a reddit hole and wound up with the oldest card in my collection

several months ago, i saw a photo pop up in a link - i think it was sourced from reddit but not sure - of a young man in his dorm room circa 1910 or so

it was pretty clear to me that there were a bunch of tobacco cards posted on his wall. that made me smile because i pinned a couple of 1978 o-pee-chee cards to my wall when i was a kid.

anyway, i decided to see if i could recognize any cards but then figured that perhaps someone else had already done the work. and, of course, they had.

back in 2016, a blog called baseball researcher had taken on this task, and they put together a pretty comprehensive post about the photo which is well worth your time.

some of the first cards identified were those way in the upper left of the photograph, including a 1909 t206 tom downey card. now, the downey card has two variations but the one on the wall is the non-fielding variation (i.e. no glove). the author notes that downey is shown in an all-blue uniform which is accurate, while the red armband he is sporting is an artistical interpretation of the black armbands that all nl clubs wore in honor of national league president harry pulliam. a memorial armband, you say?

i already had some cards to represent this memorial in my armband and memorial patches minicollection, but not one showing a cincinnati player. so, i went out and found a 1909 t206 tom downey non-fielding variation card to add.

mine is also a sweet caporal back

sweet! dude! sweet!

it's not the first t206 card i've owned (the other one was also a red) but this one will stay in my collection. it predates the 1933 goudey bud clancy card that was the oldest card i own, and i think it will be tough to beat this one. sometimes it pays to scroll.