Motown matchbooks

When it comes to '30s matchbooks, I might occasionally ignore my "rules". Such was the case with this three-item lot I picked up for ten bucks.

Two of the lot were baseball players for the Detroit Tigers. Joyner "Jo-Jo" White had a nice career, but of course I got this lot primarily to have a playing-days "card" of Charley Gehringer. The Diamond matchbooks had a very varied checklist - no Ruth or Gehrig, for example. The biggest stars in the sets are probably Mel Ott, Carl Hubbell, Dizzy Dean - Gehringer is probably right up there with any of them.

There was also one football matchbook. Not being as familiar with the early history of the early NFL, I had to look up the Portsmouth Spartans. It turns out they are the predecessor to today's Detroit Lions. I thought that was an interesting which is why I put the bid on the lot in the first place. I figured it would get topped but somehow never did.

After I had the matchbooks in hand I looked them up to see what years they were from. In doing that I found out that the Glenn (not Glen) Presnell is part of the 1933 Diamond football set which is apparently really rare. I couldn't even find an individual copy of this particular matchcover for sale, and the few I did find from this set seem to often go for over $50, sometimes well over $50 each. So this matchbook I got on a whim is probably even more valuable than Mantle I picked up last week. This pickup was all dumb luck, though.

It's not worth it's own post but I wanted to show this matchcover I picked up in another lot I picked up recently. This one was mostly 1950s matchbooks from Manhattan restaurants. The first of it's kind, the Yankee Stadium Club was for a limited number of season ticket holders; there was a restaurant and bar below the field level seats.