I collect only baseball cards. And I have chosen, quite contentedly, to limit my collecting to all base Topps cards (and the Topps Gypsy Queen cards) and then any brand before Topps came into existence in 1951. This keeps me relatively sane in that it narrows the nearly infinite supply of cards I could seek. Many of you probably know about my four major baseball card displays. I'll review. There's the biggest -- Last Topps (Base) Card of Every Hall of Famer with a Topps Card. There's my first genius idea -- The Merkle's Boner collection, 12 cards of all the players on the field for that play, mounted in position on a baseball field background. There's my T207 Cubs (near) Set collection -- the eight gettable Cubs from that set mounted on a black, velvet and red-ribbon-laced C. And there's the display of other cools cards I have on a shelf in the den -- all of my other non-Topps cards, plus a few Topps cards that are special to me.
Enough background. As some of you also know, I'm slowly replacing the Topps den cards with other non-Topps cards as I acquire them. At the moment, there are only seven Topps cards remaining on that shelf, and the 1951 Yogi Berra is about to be replaced by a T205 Germany Schaefer. And it occurred to me suddenly today -- although I think I vaguely noticed this before -- that two of the displays are entirely white players and the den display is becoming whiter and whiter. Given the parameters of my collecting, this is almost by definition. Because...racism. Pre-1951 cards, the non-Topps, are gonna be almost ALL white guys because I've only got three years where it was even possible to have players of other races. The Last Topps Card display is fine, of course, because thankfully the Hall of Fame has been remarkably good about not caring about the race of the players, only their accomplishments. So the first card on that display is Jackie Robinson, followed pretty closely by Satchel Paige, etc. The Merkle's Boner (1908 incident) is all white people. The T207 (1912 cards) is all white people. And the den display (34) cards is down to four players of color.
This really bothered me so I have set out to remedy it, slightly at least. Because I can only look at 1948, 1949, and 1950 cards, my choices are limited. And the black players with cards from those years are virtually all superstars -- Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Satchel Paige. And they're all rookie cards or close to it. So, while I'd love to have a 1949 Paige, that's just not financially gonna happen. But I started to explore the 1950 Bowman set. I found exactly five black players of the 252 in the set. Sigh. Racism bad. And three were Robinson, Campy, and Newcombe, huge stars. But two were not. There is Hank Thompson and there is Sam Jethroe, neither of whom I had heard of before, but both of whom were stars and true pioneers. I won't go into the details, but you should Wiki them both. Not as famous as Robinson or Monte Irvin or others, but really special players, for many reasons.
So a 1950 Bowman Hank Thompson is on its way. And I'm sure I'll get a 1950 Sam Jethroe soon. And I'll hunt for other non-white players to put in the den display. Because it feels right. And I'm learning more history of the game.
Don't know why I'm sharing all this, but feel free to respond with your thoughts.
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