THE 1959 DAD’S COOKIES ROSTER, LED BY MICKEY MANTLE, WILLIE MAYS AND OTHER LEGENDARY PLAYERS, OFFERS A SWEET TREAT FOR COLLECTORS OF CARDBOARD TREASURES
By Robert Wilonsky
There are copious cardboard gems to be found in Heritage Auctions’ July 12-13 Summer Sports Card Catalog Auction, among them a coveted mint-condition 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson, the beloved gem-mint Michael Jordan Fleer rookie card and a gem-mint chrome rookie card signed by a young Bryce Harper. There are also signed Shohei Ohtanis and best-of-the-best Ty Cobb tobacco cards, as well as sealed packs, boxes and cases containing untold treasures.
But the 1959 baseball cards that once came stapled to containers full of Canadian cookies might be the auction’s sweetest offerings of all. The cards are so rare that Professional Sports Authenticator counts only 69 of them in its population report. More than half of that population – 37 cards! – is available in Heritage’s July auction, represented by a stacked roster whose legendary lineup includes Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Eddie Mathews, Whitey Ford, Ernie Banks and Yogi Berra.
Willie Mays is widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time, and this 1959 Dad’s Cookies card highlights the legendary center fielder during the height of his career.
Mickey Mantle was a key figure in the New York Yankees’ dominance beginning in the 1950s, when this rare Dad’s Cookies card was printed.
One of the Dad’s Cookies albums where kids could paste their baseball cards
Fret not if you’ve never heard the name of the cards’ distributor, Dad’s Cookies. Their place in the history books – buried in the footnotes, recorded in the fine print – makes them so significant and extraordinary.
“These cards excite even the most veteran collector because they’re something most hobbyists haven’t seen in years – or, more likely, ever,” says Joe Orlando, Heritage’s Executive Vice President in Sports. “These Dad’s Cookies cards are why people hunt for these things – to find that lost gem, the forgotten treasure.”
Fifteen years after Hank Aaron appeared on this 1959 Dad’s Cookies card, he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record.
This Dad’s Cookies card features the St. Louis Cardinals’ Stan Musial, one of the greatest hitters in baseball history.
The Dad’s Cookies cards were printed by a company well known in the hobby: Exhibits Supply Company, which was founded in 1907 in Chicago by J. Frank Meyer, a printer who created picture postcards distributed in arcades, the so-called “pleasure palaces” of the early 20th century. As Sports Collectors Digest noted in its extensive history of the manufacturer, Exhibits started with risqué photos of women (“art models”) in 1914 before branching out into “baseball players, boxers, movie stars and more art models” and then expanding into entertainment figures, wrestlers, boxers, football players and cowboys. The cards sold for a penny.
Exhibits thrived for decades, eventually licensing its products to other companies and countries. In 1959, that included Dad’s Cookies, which started in Los Angeles, opened a Vancouver outpost in 1930 and was eventually swallowed whole by Nabisco in 1986.
This example is the only graded 1959 Dad’s Cookies card featuring legendary pitcher Whitey Ford.
This example is the only graded 1959 Dad’s Cookies card featuring the Milwaukee Braves’ Eddie Mathews.
The cards were promotional items stapled to bags and boxes of cookies, each one bearing a note from “Sandy” (the company’s Scottish mascot) persuading the kids to collect all 64 “autographed” pictures of “a BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL STAR.” There was also a promotion for a “FREE COLOURED ALBUM” into which the kids could paste their giveaway photos.
This explains why all these cards are so rare – and why even those graded “poor” remain the highest graded (or the only graded) in PSA’s scarcely populated census.
ROBERT WILONSKY is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.