Sunday, March 6, 2011

Card of the Week Part 7 - 1921 Exhibit Babe Ruth


This week, the featured card is the 1921 Exhibit Babe Ruth. Exhibit produced a litany of various cards, focusing on the pop culture of the time. Their cards ran the gamut of topics, from sports to entertainers to fighter planes and even Benito Mussolini and strippers (seriously). From 1921, when Exhibit began it's foray into the trading card business, to 1971, it is estimated that they produced over 14000 different cards on various topics.

Exhibit, not being a tobacco or candy company, had a different way of distributing these cards. As most people during that time frame went to bars or amusement parks for entertainment, they created a card dispencing machine, the sole purpose of which was to sell these cards. This was significant for the time, as previously cards, regardless of topic, were intended as a secondary piece of advertising. For Exhibit, the cards were the purpose.

The card featured is the Babe Ruth from the inagural set. Unlike most items featuring Ruth, this one has him in a fielding position, which is exceedingly rare. Notice how he seems to be staring off into the distance, even as his body is, theoretically, facing the field of play. Yet, even dispite his seeming nonchelance towards fielding being captured for all time, Ruth was a solid fielder for his time. In 1921, he had a .966, which was actually .006 higher than the league average. Over his career, his defensive wins above replacement, which compares a player to the league average, finished at a positive 7.4. All in all, Ruth was not a liability in the field of play.

This is a very rare card, with a very rare image of Ruth, capturing a skill that he still had, but was not considered as noteworthy as his prodigious power. Exhibit did quite well to use this as the picture for this set.

1 comment:

  1. what would be the value of this card please reply to kosty_20@hotmail.com

    ReplyDelete