A short, quick Thrift Treasures for you all today. On Presidents Day my wife and I decided to take a “Date Day” and head to a beach-front city about 40 miles from our home. The kids got to stay with grandma, who was lucky enough to have all the grand kids on this day. We decided to grab some coffee and just walk the streets and see what was for sale. The first store we stepped into was an antique store, which was just like all the others I’d been to over the years. Lots of display cases packed with small items from pens to pennants. But in one case the guy had five baseball cards all marked at $25 each. He had one 1909-1911 T206 card — oddly enough it was one that I already owned; one T-207; and then two other cigarette era cards that I could immediately identify. The fifth? This …
Two things immediately popped into my head: I know that set, it’s not as old as the cigarette cards, but from the early 1900s, and I know that name to be that of a Hall of Famer. After a few minutes I decided to buy it.
The Jennings is a 1919-1921 w514 card. It’s not super valuable, but it’s in pretty good shape considering it’s nearly a century old. The bottom corner as you can tell is damaged. It’s actually been torn before but repaired on the back with a small piece of tape. There also is some tape in the top left corner from where it previously had been adhered to a sheet in an album. The price point was about right, if not slightly under priced. I figured it is a nice memento to remember the trip by. It’s also fun to think that I rescued this from the store in a city where many would rather spend the day at the beach than watching baseball, let along collecting items related to the game.
Jennings is shown here as the manager of the Detroit Tigers. Jennings played int he late 1800’s and early 1900s before becoming the manager of the Tigers, and later the New York Giants. He left the game in 1925 after managing his second year with New York and then died less than three years later. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1945.
cardboardicons.com 
