Here’s something that may have gone undetected by collectors of rare baseball cards. The photos of Emil ‘Irish’ Meusel and his brother Bob are misidentified on the 1920s Lections series.
Irish’s great nephew, Ken Robings, wrote to us a few months ago about the mix-up after seeing some of the rare cards on the auction block. He says the photo of Bob is actually Irish and vice-versa.
While it’s not believed the switch was ever corrected, Lections cards as a whole are quite scarce.
According to collector Jon Canfield who once acquired a set from a man who remembered getting the cards as a young boy, local officials running for office gave speeches and shook hands with the crowd at a state or county fair in upstate New York.
The adults who watched these political rallies were given Election cards showing the candidate. The children who accompanied the parents to the fair where instead given a “Lection” card by the candidates depicting a baseball player. Since they were only handed out in one local area over the span of just a few days, the cards are exceptionally rare; so rare they weren’t even discovered until the 1990’s.
Babe Ruth and a few other Hall of Famers are in the set.
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Satchel Paige’s 1971 Baseball Hall of Fame ring, his passport from 1958 with a rare full name (‘Leroy Robert Paige’) signature and his 1971 NY Yankees Old Timers Day watch have been consigned to SCP Auctions.
The passport is stamped in Mexico when he went to Durango, Mexico to shoot the movie “The Wonderful Country”.
Bidding on the items will open April 30.
“We expect a lot of attention for his passport and Hall of Fame ring,” said SCP’s David Kohler.
The items were consigned by surviving family members of the Hall of Fame pitcher.
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