Seven graded baseball cards from a Pennsylvania bakery nearly a century ago could bring in some dough for their owner.
Heritage Auctions’ Spring Sports Card Catalog sale, which concludes the weekend of March 22-23, will include some fresh to the hobby cards from the 1928 Greiner’s Bread series.
According to PSA, only nine Greiner’s cards have been submitted for grading, Of those, seven are included in the Heritage sale. SGC has graded only three.
According to the listings for each card, they were found in a “newly discovered collection.”
The cards include the two highest-graded cards — both PSA 4s — of Hall of Famers Edd Roush and George Kelly. They were involved in a trade for each other after the 1926 season in a deal between the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Giants. Interestingly, the Roush card refers to him as “Eddie.”
Four of the Greiner cards earned PSA 2 grades. They depict Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Gabby Hartnett and Goose Goslin, and also catcher Bob O’Farrell.
O’Farrell is noted for throwing out Babe Ruth, who was trying to steal second base, for the final out of the 1926 World Series.
The final card for sale features George Uhle, a pitcher with Cleveland. That card graded out at PSA 1.
The cards measured 1 3/8 inches by 2½ inches and had stark, black-and-white photographs.
The Greiner set included 60 cards and are practically identical to the W502 strip cards issued in 1928. Both sets use the same photographs; the lone difference is that the Greiner card fronts put the player’s name and card number inside a rectangular box at the bottom of the card. The names and card numbers in the W502 set are part of the card’s white frame.
To complicate matters, both sets from 1928 were practically the same as the 1927 E210 York Caramel set.
The York and Greiner cards are regional sets, both coming from companies in Pennsylvania.
What set the Greiner cards apart was a promotion on the card backs touting the company’s breads, pies and pastries.
Prices were good for Greiner’s Bread. A newspaper advertisement in the Latrobe Bulletin on Aug. 31, 1928, noted that customers could buy one loaf for 10 cents or two for 19 cents. It cannot be verified, but there is a good chance that a young Arnold Palmer, who was born in Latrobe, enjoyed Greiners Bread as a child.
The late Bob Lemke, who edited the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, once wrote that Greiners Bread offered customers a free loaf of bread for every Babe Ruth card that was found. Collectors who assembled the entire 60-card set would receive 10 loaves.
The Greiner Bakery Co. has had a long history in western Pennsylvania.
According to a history of Indiana County, Greiner’s Bread was founded on June 2, 1880, by William Greiner, in the city of Indiana, lo
cated about 45 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The business was bought in 1908 by his son, George W. Greiner, and in 1925 it was incorporated as the Greiner Bakery Company, Inc.
“Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Eat Greiner’s Bread,” a note in the 1908 Indiana Gazette read.
In November 1927, the Greiner Bakery Co. offered a deal where customers collecting the most bread wrappers could enter a contest. The top prize was a “6 Tube Atwater Kent Radio” that was “complete with Tubes and Batteries.” Second prize? A $10 gold piece.
But with baseball fever spiking in western Pennsylvania – the Pirates won the World Series in 1925 and the National League pennant in 1927 — a baseball promotion seemed like an excellent marketing ploy.
The card expected to get the most interest in the Heritage Auctions sale is the Gehrig card. The Iron Horse was coming off a monumental 1927, leading the majors in RBI (173), doubles (52) and total bases (447). His 47 home runs were second only to Ruth’s 60 that season, and Gehrig batted .373.
The 1928 season would be just as productive, as the Yankees first baseman batted .374, led the majors with 147 RBI and 47 doubles. His on-base percentage was a breathtaking .467.
The Gehrig and Goslin cards are already in the four-figure range, and the others are likely to rise as the bidding ends in about two weeks.
Heritage has sold 1928 Greiner cards before. In August 2015, a Joe Harris card graded 51 by SGC (VG/EX) sold for $2,031.50 (including a buyer’s premium).
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