1922 Kolbs Bakery Bender Pin

Charles Bender loved baseball and after his major league (and Federal League) days had ended in 1917 he pitched and managed in the minors before returning to the big leagues as a coach for several organizations. Along the way, he also coached the US Naval Academy team for four years.

In 1922 he was managing the AAA International League's Reading (Pa.) Aces and took a regular turn on the mound. He threw 183 innings at the age of 38 and had some pretty impressive numbers. That same year the Kolb Baking of Philadelphia issued this small pin as part of an ongoing set that continued into 1923. The pins promoted Kolb's Mothers' Bread. 32 different pins are known and the ACC classification is PB4.

The pins are small. I took this picture to show some perspective:

Bender is not the only well-known name in the set. Al Schacht aka 'The Clown Prince of Baseball' is also included. I have problems taking glare-free pics with my phone and I'm too lazy to dig out my digital camera so I'm including a shot from an online auction of three other PB4s.

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EDIT...In the comments, Fuji asked if there was any info on how these were distributed. I had spent a bit of time poking around previously but hadn't found this until I played around with different search terms:

This is a store display item that was auctioned thru Goodwin Auctions' site in 2014. The text description implies that the pins were distributed with the packages of bread themselves. Here is the text from the auction description:

"In 1922 and 1923 Kolb’s Bakery, makers of Mother’s Bread in Reading, Pennsylvania produced a set of small discs which were included with loaves of bread as a sales premium. The Reading International League entry was known as the Aces in 1922 and changed to the Keystones in 1923. Another significant change for 1923 was the departure of Chief Bender who had served as the team’s player/manager the previous team. Thirteen of Reading’s 20 players on the 1923 roster would log time in the majors. To help promote the collectors’ disks, Kolb’s Bakery created these marvelous store displays, showing all the players in the set, while silently teasing children to get their mom’s to buy Mother’s Bread. We can only assume the promotion met with marginal success, considering the set was abandoned after a mere two years"

Chief Bender Sweet Caporal Pinback and S74 Silk

My Charles Bender collection grew by two non-cardboard pieces recently. I was able to pick up this Sweet Caporal pinback on eBay.  These were produced from 1910-1912 and there were 152 baseball subjects plus a bunch of variations for a total of 209 different pins. They are not in high demand so the prices on most common players are very reasonable. Old Cardboard has the scoop on these. 

The front of mine is in really good shape. The back isn't bad either. The paper insert is intact but off-center. I like these things so much I'm tempted to go after a few more.  

Below is the pic I took of the pin with a dime so you can see the relative size. 

Right after that arrived I won an auction for this S74 Silk from 1909-1910. There were two types of these made available in packages of tobacco. Type 1 is known as the 'white' silks and they came with a paper backing that advertised the brand of tobacco. The Type 2 Silks like mine are referred to as the colored silks and they had no paper backing. More about these beauties is available on the Old Cardboard site. 

There is no way I'm going to take the silk out of the holder so a bit of the contrast is lost in the scan.

Here is a closer look at the upper portion which displayed the A's classic elephant and the team name.

And here is the lower portion. 

There is a Bender in the Type 1 checklist and I'll track it down at some point. For now I'm happy to have this one.

I Love a Mystery

Back in May I posted this little Billy Pierce pin but I had no idea at the time of what it was. 

It looked to me to be just some sort of unofficial, unauthorized junk pin and I hadn't paid it much mind since I found it in a box of other junk pins on a dealer's table. 

But since there were a couple of Pierce pins on my want list I continued to run my eBay search for 'Pierce pin' and lo and behold one day this appeared:

I bid a few dollars and I won. So it turns out to have been a Comiskey Park giveaway from 1996. As the backing 'card' shows, the Pierce was one of four given away that season. I'm happy to find out it is a more or less 'legit' collectible. 

A closer look at the 'card' shows that this particular one may have originally held the Ted Lyons pin. The info given shows 'future' giveaway dates including the Pierce pin nite. The Pierce pin pictured on the 'card' is slightly different from the finished product. The 'ribbon' is set on an angle on the real pin and it includes Pierce's full name. The photo used on the pin had the background seen on the 'card' version cropped out. 

So nothing earth shattering here but to a player collector I think it's good to know a piece has some background other than just being a random junk box artifact. And here is a scan of the backer card without the pin attached. It has the weight and feel of thick paper, about the same as those manila binder section dividers.

I've been working on the railroad (collection)!

Well, I have to confess it's not really much of a collection. The only 'authentic' Santa Fe Railroad items I have are a few vintage postcards from the 50s . Mostly I have pins and reproduced badges. I became interested in the Santa Fe line when I first saw my father's train set as it rolled around our Christmas tree many, many years ago.

The place I bought these newest items is the Galveston Railroad Museum. The museum is housed in the former Santa Fe Union Station. They have two wonderfully restored ATSF Warbonnets numbered Santa Fe 315 and 316 among numerous other train cars and engines. The place took a huge hit during Hurricane Ike in 2008 and was under about eight feet of water but it's been refurbished and is better than ever. The progress the staff has made is remarkable.

The shot glass and pins at the top come from the museum shop and are the latest additions to a modest cache of Santa Fe items. Here is a shot I took when we visited the museum about a month ago.

Two of my vintage postcards:

Nothing in my Santa Fe 'collection' is worth more than the couple of bucks I paid for each item but I like having them on display among my sports stuff.

Three PR4 "Cracker Jack" Pins or are they?

These neat little pins are classified as PR4 and they date from 1930 to 1933.Napkin Doon (as in "Adventures of") showed off some graded beauties he came across at his LCS earlier this month. Those were very sweet. These metal pinbacks feature baseball players, presidents, actors/actresses and, according to an advertising piece I found, 'Indians, generals, animals and birds'. 

I had this post ready to go and included a little history of baseball-related Cracker Jack prizes when I stumbled across a couple of things on a card discussion forum that made me stop and re-think things. More of that in a minute.

First, these pins are not terribly expensive if you want to pick up some of the non-sports pins as I did. The Kit Carson and Wild Bill Hickok came from eBay as a single lot. They are not in pristine condition but I was certainly willing to pay the $10 to pick them both up. The Bill Terry was about $14 I think. It's in very nice condition for what it cost. Most of the other baseball pins I found from this set were more costly.  

Now I have always assumed, given that the are generally called 'Cracker Jack' pins, that they were prizes in boxes of Cracker Jack. Well, maybe they were and maybe they were not. Check out these two photos:

Above is a gum wrapper which shows the contents to be the pins and below an advertising piece featuring them and giving the issuing company as being General Gum, Inc. of Chicago.

Wikipedia makes no mention of the 'General Gum Co.' in relation to Cracker Jack. While CJ is always associated with the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the poster lists Chicago as the gum company's home that may just be happenstance. 

I guess there are a couple of possibilities. This auction house makes the casethat the pins may have never been Cracker Jack prizes at all. Or, given that the gum company was in Chicago, the manufacturer may have licensed/sold the pins to both General Gum and Cracker Jack.

I don't know the actual facts of all this, and I don't really care much. I just like the pins and am happy to have a couple.  The picture below shows two of them along with a U.S. Quarter for perspective.