Thursday, July 31, 2014

The Joy of the Completed Set: 1939 Wheaties - Series 13 - 100 Years of Baseball


This is probably one of my all-time favorite Baseball sets.  Featured here is the 1939 Wheaties box set, known as Series 13, of the "100 Years of Baseball."

Last week, I finally decided to pull the trigger to get the final card.  See it above.  Click on any pic to embiggen.

It is card #1 and it tells us all about the "Design of the 1st Diamond."  The remaining 7 cards (there are only 8 cards in the entire set) provide historical information about the game.  It includes Abraham Lincoln's nomination on a ballfield, the creation of the curveball and how fans first hated the Baseball glove.

I had first stumbled upon this Wheaties set a decade ago, and the Baseball history buff in me knew immediately I had to chase it. I picked up my first card then, card #8, since it featured Ernest Lawrence Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat."  (You can see that at the very bottom)  Then slowly but surely, I added more as they popped up.

It isn't a particularly scarce set, so that wasn't the reason why it took me a decade to complete.  It's just that I'm an extremely patient person.

As for the sets historical accuracy... Well, you gotta take that with a grain of salt.  All of this is based on information known or understood in 1939 - some 75 years ago.

These cards sell for about $20 to $30 a piece in decent condition.  As you likely guessed, these cards were printed on the reverse of Wheaties cereal boxes, so you had to cut them out yourself.  They measure about 6' x 8' with the tab included.  Check out scans of the complete set below.







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