Thursday, April 23, 2020

Unique Oddball NY Giants Pickup

I have spread my wings a bit on where I am seeking out cards these days.  I am not buying many new cards and while I still look frequently at eBay, COMC and Sportlots I am consistently looking for ways to get deals on card and bring unique cards into my collection.  I have shared a couple Facebook pick-ups recently and another source for cards for me have been some online auctions.  I have bid on and won a few things over the last several months. This week I got a small package that included the item I wanted to share today.

This is a 1935-36 Diamond Match matchbook cover of Mark Koenig.  Koenig had a 12 year baseball career and his last 2 years were with the Giants.  He played all over the diamond but was primarily a shortstop throughout his career.  He was a career .279 hitter without much power hitting only 28 HRs in his career with a lifetime .367 slugging percentage.  If you struggle to read upside down, I decided to snap another pic in the other direction:

I also took a picture next to a standard sized card in case you happen to be someone who isn't familiar with matchbooks:

I really enjoy adding items to my Giants collection from their New York days and this item still leaves me short of 20 different cards/items in my collection from the 30s.

I was able to bring this home in a lot of 2 matchbooks for just a $5 bid plus the shipping.  Here is the other matchbook of a more familiar name:

I will probably just hang onto the Ethan Allen matchbook even though it doesn't fit into my core collection, it is a pretty cool item.

If you know of any pre-1950s affordable Giants items to seek out, please let me know.

4 comments:

  1. Those matchbook covers are really cool. When I was a kid, I played a baseball simulation game on my Apple IIe and my favorite team to use was the 1927 NY Yankees. That's where I learned about Koenig and the rest of that awesome team. As for Ethan Allen, I'm familiar with that name too. But didn't realize he was a baseball player. For some reason, I thought it was a furniture store.

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  2. Oh those are very cool and unique. I have a matchbook cover from the Navy cruiser my dad was on in '46.

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  3. I picked up a 1936 matchbook cover of Gabby Hartnett. It's easily one of the most unique items in my collection. I can't believe you were able to get those so cheap! I think the Hartnett set me back the price of a blaster.
    https://tilnextyear-tom.blogspot.com/search?q=matchbook

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  4. Haven't gotten into matchbooks. Yet. But yeah they're pretty cool.

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