Strip cards seem to be finally getting some long overdue recognition. While they may not be as popular as some other card sets from the first quarter of the 20 th century, they’re a very affordable way to accumulate a lot of Hall of Famers at a reasonable price. Many of the strip card series are loaded with Hall of Famers and one such card is in our auctions on eBay right now. We have a 1920 W-516-1 Babe Ruth graded ‘A’ for ‘Authentic’. This particular card is special for a number of reasons. It’s one of few cards issued during the early 1920s. There simply weren’t a lot of baseball cards produced on a mainstream level from about 1912-1932. Secondly, it’s Babe’s second card after joining the New York Yankees. Third, it pictures him in his original position as a pitcher (interesting since he hit 54 homers, drove in 137 runs and batted .376 that year!), one of the last times we’d see such an image during his Yankee tenure. The W-516 set consists of just 30 cards including Ruth, Ty Cobb and several other Hall of Famers. Produced on lower quality card stock and issued in strips of multiple cards, these were often cut by kids who were not very gentle or handled as cherished pieces of childhood (often times, both). They are beyond scarce in high grade so finding any examples is a treat. Another ‘Authentic’ graded Ruth card from this series recently sold at auction for over $500, a pretty nice entry point to a Babe Ruth card collection when you consider the age of the card and the history. There is only one complete set of these in PSA’s Registry so that should tell you how hard it is to find more than a few examples, even at major card shows or online. When you combine scarcity with a player like Babe Ruth, it’s not a stretch to say this is one card that’s probably undervalued.
