My Wallet Card

I have been thinking for a while about a new inspiration for this blog. While I enjoy doing the daily player profiles I get the feeling it might be getting stale for some readers and I was wondering what to do mix in. Then today I read Gavin's Game of Wallet Card idea from his terrific blog Baseball Card Breakdown.

That gave me a great idea. Another area I am becoming interested in is the many things to see and do in midtown. Manhattan where I work. I have become a big fan of blogs like Scouting New York and  Facebook groups like NYC 1950 to Present. Lately I've been taking a lot of walks around the area where I work, and there are so many interesting things that would be just perfect for this project. I would avoid super-touristy attractions like Times Square or the Empire State Building but there are so many cool things that would be fun to share, and the wallet card project would be the perfect way to do it. I am thinking that I will post pictures of the wallet card in some interesting place and post at least once a week, and maybe more, with a short description of why I chose that particular location. I've already got a ton of ideas.

But which card should I pick - that was a hard decision! I didn't want to do a full-size card because it would be mangled instantly in my wallet. I know some bloggers are interested to see what happens to a card over time, but my collection is not condition sensitive and I've got a ton of beat-up cards already. However, I don't have many minis. Looking at some of my mini cards, I had the inspiration to use the 1988 Topps Sticker Backs. I actually collected stickers before I switched to cards as a kid. When Topps switched from paper sticker backs to little "baseball cards" on the back, I was very excited. A sticker (or two) and a card all in one! It's actually the first baseball card set I ever completed. And there was no better choice for this Yankee fan as to who should represent the set in my wallet than Donnie Baseball himself, Don Mattingly.

Readers, let me know if you do not want to see too much of this card throughout the year, as I might easily do 50 or 100 of these. If, on the other hand, you like the idea and have any specific requests of places in midtown Manhattan you'd like to see him end up, I'd love to hear them. I may occasionally do a Long Island picture, and I'll definitely do Yankee Stadium when I go to a game, but this will be very Manhattan-centric. Hope you enjoy it.

Wallet Card with the Wallet Card Champ prize

Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown introduced the Wallet Card in 2015, and most bloggers stopped doing it at the end of the year. I kept plugging along though (even I thought it was over) because I was enjoying doing it and it provided an outlet for another interest of mine that I didn't really have a blog space for. I was quite surprised then that Gavin declared my efforts the Wallet Card Champ for 2016. Pretty awesome to receive a prize you didn't even know you were competing for.

 And what a prize!

 An autographed Don Mattingly card! Needless to say that immediately becomes one of the biggest highlights of my collection. Thanks so much Gavin!

-  -  --- ----o

I figure I'll also use Gavin's method of breaking up his blog posts to break up this one and highlight something I should have done with my last trade package. When SpastikMooss threw in a Nick Johnson autograph in his trade package, it gave me my first ever trifecta - autograph, relic card and rookie card for one player. A few years ago it was a big thing on the blogs. You don't really see it much anymore but I thought it was cool that I finally achieved it for one player.

Final Wallet Card post of the year

It's been a lot of fun showing one of my other interests: obscure bits of NY history and anachronisms - leftovers of defunct businesses, sometimes decades old that remain to this day. Some of the signs wallet card visited have already been covered up - was fortunate to get them when I did. I will still post wallet card content from time to time - in fact there are still a few already photographed that I haven't posted yet - but it will not be regular like it was in 2015, the Year of the Wallet Card. Thanks DefGav for the great idea!

For this post, I have a few odds and ends that I photographed that were not really strong enough for an individual post but that I still found interesting. But first, here is the first photo of Wallet Card back in January, when it was in a whole lot better condition than it is now.

Now for the current battered version with a few more random points of interest throughout Manhattan.

An Asics store opened on 42nd street earlier this year, than abruptly closed due to a dispute with an investor. The store used for some display space a real subway car that started running in 1961, and was covered in graffiti in the 1970s. The car still sits in the abandoned store.

 Here is a side view. Note that one of the graffiti images is a man in a Yankees hat.

Gimbels closed it's flagship department store on 34th street in 1986. However the site of their former warehouse still has "Gimbels" painted down the side of the building.

 This liquor store on East 34th street not only has an ad for MLB Wine (who knew that existed?) but an old-school neon sign with an "LE" telephone exchange. LE in this case stood for Lexington.

 Near an exit ramp for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel is an old black and white enamel street sign. It is very rare to see one still in use - most have been gone for decades.

 The current subway system is made up of the old IRT, IND and BMT systems. Although the terms have not been officially used since the 1950s, an old IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) sign remains on 28th Street.

The classic Pepsi-Cola neon sign in Long Island City, across the East River from the UN building. Built in 1936, it is threatened by real estate developers but others in the city are fighting to get landmark status for the sign.

 The Hell's Kitchen Restaurant at 9th Avenue and 47th Street occupies the location of the former Captain Best Fish Market. A bit of the old sign remains on the top of the restaurant - you can make out the word "Captain" if you zoom in on the top.

 When the Mayfair Building in Times Square was torn down recently, it exposed an ad for the long-defunct Hotel Longacre, with rooms for $1.00, or $1.50 for a room with a bath. The sign had been hidden for nearly a hundred years (and will be again when the new building is erected).

Wallet Card at the former Carnegie Deli

Back when I started doing a wallet card in January 2015, I mentioned that I would take requests for locations in or around midtown Manhattan or Long Island. (Still happy to do so.) The first request came from Unclemoe of the 2008 Topps Set Blog, who asked for the Carnegie Deli. That ended up being one of my first wallet card posts.

The Carnegie Deli closed at the end of 2016, and its iconic sign is gone. I figured I would do a follow-up Wallet Card photo with the now-former Carnegie Deli. The sign is gone, the windows are boarded up, and the wallet card looks a lot worse for wear two years later.

Wallet Card update

- Can anybody use these codes?
- Still sorting through all those boxes. Mixed in with the baseball were about 50-75 soccer cards - Topps and Donruss from 2015 and 2016. Also around the same number of golf cards from 2013 SP. Anybody collect either of those sports?
- My wallet card has really been taking a beating. Most worrisome is that a rip was almost completely bisecting the middle of the card, threatening to tear it in two. I saw nothing in the original wallet card post on Baseball Card Breakdown about not being able to alter the card, so I taped up the middle. It's much sturdier now. I photographed it in the pocket of a book I picked up from my local library which they have had since the early 1970s. The Oceanside Free Library is now just called the Oceanside Library. The phone number is still the same but no longer has the RO exchange, which refers to the nearby town of Rockville Centre.

30-Day Baseball Card Collection: Day 30

"Your favorite card in your collection." I don't know that I have one favorite card, but I've really been enjoying doing the wallet card photos. I know that few people do them anymore, and probably not everyone gets what I'm doing. I'm really the only regular wallet card poster now, so seeing this negative comment on another blog was disheartening as it was very likely talking about my posts. Hey, a blog is primarily for the blogger and I enjoy doing these photos, documenting leftover anachronisms that are years and often decades old. A few days later I got a positive comment on my own blog by Billy Kingsley which made me feel better. I have a couple more wallet card posts coming up - I like them even if few others might. But then I might scale down a bit on it. Still, it's been a great deal of fun and something I will always have my eye out for.

Wallet card with some functional old signs

 Late post as I was in the city today. While there I took some wallet card photos. These three are kind of a similar theme; some out of date elements on functional signage.

These automatic sprinkler signs are everywhere, for use of the fire department. If you look closely at this one, however, you will see an address for the Rael Automatic Sprinkler Company, Whitestone 57 N.Y. Rael still exists (now on Long Island rather than Whitestone, Queens). This sign predates 1963 and the introduction of the zip code, with the old postal zone instead (57 in this case). This sign is on the wall of a 7-Eleven on East 28th Street.

Nearby, outside a service entrance on East 26th Street I noticed an Elevator Alarm Bell box with an old phone number, EXeter 2-6400. Just like addresses, phone numbers as we know them today were a 1960s innovation. This box is no later than 1960s, then. In 2017 I actually posted a similar one. That one said EX 2-6400 rather than EXeter 2-6400. A variation to collect!

Nearby I came across this sign. I'd seen similar ones on other NYC sites before (like Forgotten New York) but never sought it out for a wallet card photo. Still, it looks very cool, an old Art Deco style. Like the elevator box it was too high up to get a good photo and still get the wallet card in. It says "Elevator Apartments Available" with "Air Conditioning" barely visible on the bottom.

 

Found another street vendor

On Wednesday I was walking from my office to Penn Station after work and saw a Bradlee's truck stopped at a light on Sixth Avenue. Bradlee's never had a New York City location but that is not why seeing one was so surprising - it is that there hasn't been a Bradlee's location anywhere in fifteen years, as the store went bankrupt in 2001. So it was practically a ghost truck riding around, which would have made a great wallet card photo. Unfortunately by the time I got my phone out and my card out of my wallet the light had changed and the truck was too far away for a picture.

I knew it was unlikely I'd ever see the truck again (I wonder if it was this one) but the next day I decided to walk a little further along Sixth that I usually do, just in case it happened to be going by at about the same time, so I walked to 32nd street instead of 34th (doesn't sound like much but it gets you past Herald Square so at 32nd you can see quite a bit further than you can from 34th). Of course I didn't see anything so I walked down 32nd to Penn Station, where to my surprise I found a baseball card street vendor.

Actually he was more of a basketball card vendor than a baseball card vendor (I asked him his name and he said "Baby Starks" - as in John Starks). His setup is half a block from MSG so he probably does very well before Knick games. He had a fair amount of baseball stuff, though, particularly some really interesting dollar bags. Each bag had about 15 cards in it and they were mostly cards from the last three years. I picked out four bags - two with Yankees in front, and two with Mike Trout in front (because how often can you pick up Trout cards for less than a dime?). 

Here are some highlights:
There were a couple of Mike Trout cards, from 2013 and 2014 Topps Update. I had just been reading on Night Owl's blog how expensive his 2011 Update card was, so that was in my mind when I saw these.

 I see Bowman is still doing it's state flag parallels. Looks pretty good.

 It's nice to see retro designs from a brand other than Topps. The 1988 Donruss design wasn't my favorite but it does make me nostalgic from getting new cards when I was a kid.

 Not all of the cards were current; there were a few older ones like this nice Bam-Bam Meulens oddball.

 The next day I went back but he didn't have anything new. So I walked around a little bit and stumbled on something that will make an even better wallet card post - but that is for another day.

Wallet card with Mr. Zip

Here's a wallet card photo I'm really excited about. Mr. Zip! A brief history lesson:

Before World War II there was no uniformity around addressing an envelope. Veteran postal workers were experts in their areas and were able to figure out where each letter should go. Due to wartime shortages of postal workers, a 2-digit postal zone system was created for the 124 largest cities in the U.S., to help inexperienced workers determine where letters should go. After the war, as volumes increased, a better system was needed, so in 1963, two-digit state abbreviations were introduced, and every address in America got the code for their Zone Improvement Plan - ZIP Code!

Two publicize this new innovation, which like every such innovation was resisted by most, the US Postal Service introduced Mr. Zip to help publicize the new codes. Mr. Zip signs were everywhere in US post offices throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, but as ZIP code use normalized, there was no more need for Mr. Zip and he was phased out. Mr. Zip remnants still remain here and there, and I've seen them online from bloggers or people on social media who find Mr. Zip on, for example, an apartment building mail slot.

I'd never seen one in a place that was generally accessible, but quite accidentally ran across one yesterday, one that I had probably passed before but never noticed, in the Farley Post Office above Penn Station, a national landmark and one of the biggest post offices in the US. It's convenient location makes it an easy spot to mail off card packages before going to work. I was passing by an unused counter and a green platform caught my eye. It was attached to the counter so has probably always been there, but I hadn't noticed it before. Guess what was stuck to the platform!

The ZIP code in this case would be 10001. If you notice on top there is a date, but missing the last digit. I thought it might be tough to find it but it's right there on Mr. Zip's Wikipedia page - May 1963! Over the past 62 years there have clearly been some attempts to remove the sticker, but that jet-age adhesive is still going strong! If there are "white whales" in my Wallet Card quests, this was certainly one of them. Finding it yesterday certainly made my day!
 

Wallet Card at the Morgan Stanley Building

Modern office towers are not usually my Wallet Card subject, but when I saw Defgav's custom card of the Morgan Stanley Building on Johnny's Trading Spot, I figured, if it's good enough to be a Defgav custom, it's good enough to be a Wallet Card photo too. Morgan Stanley has been at this location at 1585 Broadway since 1995 but is considering a move to the newly developed Hudson Yards.

Wallet Card at Studio 54

Recently Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown posted a photo of his Wallet Card at a Studio 54 themed party. That reminded me that I had taken a wallet card photo at the doors at 254 W. 54th street a long time ago but never posted it, I think because they are not the original doors. The original Studio 54 closed in 1980, and became various other venues since then, but since the late 1990s it has been home to a theater company that has revived the "Studio 54" name.

Big additions to '73

I made another eBay purchase. 300 1973 cards for $50. Just over 16 cents a card. Considering what was in there I think I did all right. It was advertised as low-to-mid grade but most cards were in pretty decent shape.

My criteria these days for a big lot is to have big stars and high numbers. There wasn't much description of the lot, and not many photos. These three (plus one other) in the photos led me to pull the trigger. The Gossage rookie is a big-time card, and you just don't see vintage Ryan base cards in these kinds of lots very often. The Dwight Evans rookie card is not at the level of those two, but I knew it was a high-number so it made me hopeful there would be more.

 Here are some other Hall-of-Famers in the lot that I needed. Another Ryan on the League Leaders card. Blomberg is not a Hall-of-Famer but that card is iconic to those of us who collected the 1988 set. At this point I now need less than 100 cards from this set. Still need the Schmidt rookie of course. The other big ones left at this point are Mays, Reggie, Bench and some of the All-Time-Great subset cards.

 So much great photography! (Plus Wes Helms's awesome sideburns). The Beckert is my favorite.

 66 of the cards were new to me (plus three manager variations). Half of them were high numbers.

 Not quite a wallet-card but close! Maybe we need to start duffle-bag cards.

 Now, on to the 230+ cards for trade. I mentioned one other card helped sway me to the purchase. I already had a Hank Aaron card but it was trimmed on the sides. I'd rather trade the trimmed one (I put it on the back of another card so you can see where it is trimmed on the right or left) but I suppose if someone overwhelmed me for the better one I could be talked into it. But maybe someone wants a kind-of-unique oddball Aaron?

 Some more big names to trade, including a second-year Fisk.

 Lots more great photography. Including the Luis Alvarado parking lot card! (A high number)

 Almost 40 high numbers to trade.

 A sharp eyed reader might notice the checklist in there. I remember reading about it on Night Owl's blog recently - apparently unmarked copies of #588 go for big bucks - a quick look online shows the cheapest at $17 on COMC, $20 on eBay and none on Sportlots. I already have a marked-up copy which is fine with me. If Night Owl still needs it I should give him first crack, as I wouldn't have known it was so valuable otherwise. But if he doesn't need it and someone else wants to try to overwhelm me with an offer . . .

Wallet Card at Yankee Stadium

Wallet Card came out to Yankee Stadium last night and brought CC Sabathia some more good luck. This season CC is 2-0 with Wallet Card in attendance and 2-8 without it. CC pitched decently, Mark Teixeira hit two home runs, and Stephen Drew hit an insurance run in the eighth to make it 5-2, which ended up being crucial as Andrew Miller made it exciting by giving up a two run home run. Then Gregorio Petit made it too exciting by throwing away what should have been the last out, setting up the tying run on second base. Fortunately Petit redeemed himself as the next batter also hit it to him and this time he got the final out.

I usually go to day games, this was only my sixth night game ever. The Yankees had lost the previous five I had attended.

I took this photo before the game. All the ballplayers in white uniforms by the Yankee dugout are actually the US women's baseball team (not softball, baseball). They are ranked second in the world and are playing in the Pan Am Games soon. They got to stand on the field with the players during the national anthem.

Wallet card at a building not seen for 100 years

Revisiting one of my earliest wallet card photos with a big update:

You may be familiar with the famous Macy's building on 34th Street, which until a few years ago was the largest store in the world (and is still the largest in the US). Interestingly, the huge red shopping bag that says "Macy's" is on the one part of the block that Macy's does not actually own. Around 1901, R.H. Macy decided to move his store to 34th street, he quietly started buying up all of the property on the block so that he could build his superstore. However, one of his rivals found out and bought the property on the corner, with the idea that he would sell it to Macy and purchase their prior location. However, Macy decided to just build around the property instead of giving in to the guy who bought the corner property. In the 1920s, that building changed hands, and Macy's began renting the top floors of the building for advertising purposes, but never bought that last parcel on 34th street, currently home to Sunglass Hut.

The big update:

The owner of the building now is planning to lease that space to another retailer, and recently got permission from the city to replace the Macy's signage with new digital billboards.

Before we get to the new photos, a brief retrospective: 

1906: The brand new Macy's building dominates the corner holdout.

 

1940: The building is largely covered by ads.

 

1964: Color postcard

 

2015: My wallet card photo. By this time Macy's had settled into the "red shopping bag" design.

 

2026: Today! 34th street side. These top three stories had been blocked for public view since the 1920s. They were unoccupied for the past century as there was no means for dual exit with the windows blocked.

Broadway side: It's such a spooky feeling seeing these newly revealed unused floors. Kind of like digging up a grave site. 

 

 

 

Wallet Card at Yankee Stadium

Wallet Card showed up at Yankee Stadium, but the Yankees bats didn't. For the first time in six trips to the Stadium Wallet Card saw a Yankee loss, a 5-0 disappointment. CC Sabathia pitched pretty well but the bullpen let him down. While the Yankees offense was so bad that even Gary Sanchez didn't homer (he did hit a double and a single). Oh well, even with a loss it's fun to go out to the ballpark.

What my wallet card looks like now

Two years ago I took a picture of my wallet card in a very old library book, one which still had the alpha-numberic phone number. I recently noticed the same thing in a book from a different library, so here's the wallet card today:

There is a Franklin Avenue in Hewlett, which is I guess why they were FR4-1667.

Wallet Card at a Getty Station

 Haven't had a chance to do a wallet card post in a while. There is a good chance that I will be full-time working from home even after the pandemic ends, so my 20 years of daily commuting into the city would be over. There's less wallet-card fodder here in the suburbs, but hopefully I'll be able to stumble upon something every one in a while.

Getty used to be one of the leading gas station chains in the northeast. In fact the company used to be so big that they owned several other unrelated assets, including ESPN, which they sold to ABC in 1984. Getty went bankrupt in 2011. There is still a Getty Oil website, but it hasn't been updated since 2015 and most of the links don't work.

This station on Atlantic Avenue in Baldwin, NY stopped being a Getty about 15 years ago, and was completely abandoned about 10 years ago. Getty signage used to be pretty common, but now it is very difficult to find a station of any kind with a visible sign.

The road not taken

A couple of years ago I was at a crossroads in my collection. I had completed almost every major set from 1978 to 1994, covering the years I initially collected plus a few years earlier, and had many many thousands more from 1995 on. While certainly not bored of baseball cards, my collecting eye began to wander as I developed other interests.

As you can tell from my wallet card posts, I became more and more interested in "old things" - signs, advertising and other ephemera that harked back to early years, particularly the 1950s and 1960s. (I was born in 1977.) This was not because of any romantic notions of that era. I just found it fascinating to "time travel" - to peer into a past that was far enough away to be different, but close enough to be relatable. This was an era of immense social upheaval - for better and for worse - but it was also a time when people went shopping, got their car fixed, went out to eat, etc. In some ways very similar to today, in other ways very different.

What was holding me back? The first was price of course. With baseball cards you can get hundreds of cards for the price of one small sign or box or matchbook or whatever. Just as importantly, however, was the baseball card community. In other areas I did not see the same types of communities where people blogged about what they loved, and traded their extras to their peers, at least not anywhere near the extent that they are in this community.

A little more than a year ago, I came across a great Craigslist find of 1960s cards at a price that, while much higher than I ever spent on cards before, was actually a fantastic price. Some more beginners luck shortly after that got me most of the cards from the mid-1970s, including most of the big ones. I haven't had the same kind of luck since, but I have become a committed vintage baseball card collector, allowing me to enjoy collecting something older while remaining part of this wonderful community.

A while back, Matt of Once a Cub, formerly a blog but now only on Twitter, posted a card that I thought perfectly captured the two different directions my collection faced - the road I took (vintage) and the road not taken (general "old stuff"). One of my favorite things to find on older items is phone numbers with less than seven digits, either with letters in the exchange or just a shorter number. This card is a 1961 baseball card that someone stamped, presumably that year, with their name, address - and a five digit phone number! Once I got my own (unstamped) version of that card, I offered it to Matt in a trade. Now I own this card, and it is one of my very favorite cards in my collection.

I wonder how old this stamp was even in 1961. I found a great website called atlantaphonehistory.org that says that Atlanta switched from six to seven digits (two letters/five numbers). About Columbus I learned just that they received dial service in the late 1940s, but some mid-size towns such as Valdosta did not get dial service until 1964.

Needless to say, if anyone else has a card like this, I'd definitely be interested in trading for it. I would also be open to trading baseball cards for any other kind of similar ephemera with defunct stores, old phone numbers, etc.

Wallet Card at Woolworth

 I've made very few trips outside of my town the last few months, so my wallet card hasn't had many opportunities to poke it's head out. However I needed to get my car inspected, which gave me the chance to walk around the Freeport shopping district for a couple of hours, and I was able to take a lot of wallet card photos. Freeport is a town that was once prosperous but has seen hard times for the past few decades, meaning that there are lots of old stores that have never been thoroughly remodeled like you see elsewhere. I was able to find quite a bit of old signage peeking out.

There was a Woolworth location in Freeport from at least the 1920s to the early 1980s. There is still a ghost sign on the side of the building, though it is pretty faded. I found that the closer I got, the harder it was to see. If you peer closely you can just make out WOOLWORTH.

As I walked along the side of the building, I could find another bit of an old Woolworth sign. Both of these signs would have been at the back of the store which took up a full block.