babe ruth tobacco card

my grandpa pulled out a box of very old baseball cards he gave it to me going through i found a babe ruth pinch hit tobacco card. the card shows him holding three bats and a pouch of chew with a bit of a fresh chew sample inside. he said he got it at a rummage sale for 75 cents as a kid he never paid attention to it. i read up on this in a old newspaper i guess these cards where ment for adutls but they never though to look inside to find the sample. i do know that this was a way to get product name out and good for bussiness. im sorry guys i do not know more about this card i really wish i did

Honey Boy and Allen & Ginter

Many sets published these days include a time-critical element. They could have redemption cards, for example, or series-specific subsets. The message is clear: you need to purchase more cards now. Seriously, get that extra box this minute or suffer from a poorer collecting experience. For example, Topps' 2008 Allen & Ginter issue included a puzzle contest in its World's Greatest Victories subset. Solve the puzzle (and someone did) to appear in next year's version. Awesome.

Unfortunately for your savings account, solving the A&G puzzle meant collecting two rare parts of the set, the Victories themselves and the (humorously fictional) Team Orange baseball players. Though the former showed up with some frequency, Topps stated that those T.O. cards came only 1 to every 6 boxes. You can see how the strategy would (ideally) move a ton of product! As successful as A&G's idea proved, and it helped that the set was generally excellent, Topps' contest is hardly an innovation. As observed in one of my business classes, is there anything about motivating people that wasn't already known in Moses' time?

Back in the 1920s, Canada's own Purity Ice Cream company challenged collectors to amass all 21 cards from their 1927 Honey Boy set and redeem it for a free “brick” (half-gallon?) of the sweet stuff. Knowing my own enthusiasm for both the cardboard and the cream, I'd probably end up with as many of them as mowing lawns would provide. When someone did redeem the set, the maker punched each one with a small hole, as seen on the #14, Babe Ruth. (Image credit to Cycleback.com.)

Given the contest's era and localized nature of the release, it's surprising that a full set made it to the 21st Century—but at least one did. The great collector (and wartime agent) Edward Wharton-Tigar's estate sold it as part of a larger lot in the late-1990s and the Honey Boys went as a unit for $5000 soon after. I recently acquired an unpunched #5, “Snake” Siddle, which brought them onto my personal radar. As noted on Cycleback's story of the set, most cards are major league stars, but the first 8 show Canadian players. Mr. Siddle later became an umpire in the Great White North and is only known to the interwebs as calling a 1930s barnstorming game pitched brilliantly by Satchel Paige. But did Snake score some free ice cream for his efforts? And did he eventually Escape from Manitoba?

1973 TCMA Drawings & Autographs

Back in the 1970s, dealers (and collectors?) Tom Collier and Mike Aronstein started producing cards under the acronym of their first and last names, TCMA. With hundreds of issues under their belt since then, the company's almost synonymous with "oddball." Well-known for their minor league team sets, they also used available baseball photos to remember plenty of retired sort-of-stars, fill out rosters of legendary teams like the 1927 Yankees, and even create issues that are more Americana than anything else.

Like many of TCMA's early sets, the 12-card 1973 Drawings & Autographs set is postcard-sized. The artist John Anderson drafted black-and-white portraits of each player for the front and probably added the autograph based on other examples. (This version of the Babe's signature connects the "B" and "a," something seen earlier in his career.)

All 12 players pictured died prior to the set's publication, some just months before. In fact, it's tempting to say that's what inspired the release, as a homage from baseball fans--or way to capitalize on the surge in interest. (CValue.com has the full checklist and what you might pay for singles.)

#3. Roberto Clemente d. 1972
#5. Pie Traynor d. 1972
#6. Frankie Frisch d. 1973
#11. Gil Hodges d. 1972
#12. Jackie Robinson d. 1972

Clemente was the only recent player, but most count him as a legitimate all-timer. Hodges is comparatively marginal--and not even a HOFer--but probably benefited from managing the Mets to their 1969 series win.

The back makes it easy to add your own story to the Babe's and pass it along to a friend. Not sure how many of these ended up stamped and mailed, but it'd be an interesting way to surprise someone with a trade in this day and age. If you posted one of these TCMAs by USPS or count them among your collection, let us know!

1933 Blue Bird Grape Soda - Babe Ruth

More delicious than grape juice!

The front of this card is an image we've all seen before. It's a photo of Babe Ruth swinging the bat. Not a huge deal. There are thousands of cards featuring the same or nearly identical pose.

What makes this card unique is the back of the card. Geared towards boys, this promotion featured a glove and a ball. Only two different cards are known to exist, both feature Babe Ruth.

This $3.50 Spadling Babe Ruth Professional Glove (genuine horse hide and leather-lined) for 29 Blue Bird bottle caps and $1.39!

Or you could have a ball with the other offer on the back.

This Spalding Official League Ball (cork center) for 29 Blue Bird bottle caps and 89 cents!

Depending on how much a Blue Bird grape soda was in 1933, this could have been a great deal or a cheat. Either way, I'll bet kids were drinking Blue Bird in 1933.

I wonder if any future major league players got a glove from this ad. It seems plausible that at least one player would have. Although, I had an orange Mike Schmidt ball and I never even made it to little league. Things would probably be different if I were a kid today.

I could imagine myself as a kid in 1933. I'd probably bug my mother for money to buy Blue Bird grape soda or try to help out at a local store to raise enough money to buy some. Maybe I'd work for soda instead of money. I could be very focused on what I wanted when I was a little kid. Enough to miss the big picture occasionally. All I know is that I'd be a fan of Babe Ruth if I were alive back then. That is unless Babe was facing my team.

A Babe Ruth Cut Signature

Technically, this is not a card, but it has been graded as such. This leads me to believe that the companies that grade cards will let anything slip through. Would this have been graded if Jesus Flores had signed this piece of paper instead of Babe Ruth? Somehow, I don't think so.

This lovely, yellowing specimen graded at PSA 10 can be yours for $9,500.00 or best offer, plus $10.00 shipping on eBay. What a bargain. It could possibly be cheaper to steal some plutonium and convert an old DeLorean into a time machine to get a fresh signature.

This signature isn't even signed in ink, it's in pencil! No matter how carefully preserved over the years or how bold Babe Ruth applied his autograph, I find it hard to believe that this has stood up this well over the years. I look at some of the letters I wrote twenty years ago in pencil and I can barely read them. I haven't touched them since I wrote them.

Maybe I'm just too skeptical, but it just seems too good to be true. If it looks like a duck, but meows, chances are you have a cat in a costume. I hope that this doesn't turn out to be one of those cases. A Babe Ruth autograph is a wonderful thing to see. I'm just not ready to believe in this one. Not just yet anyway.