Rare Book Monthly
Articles - October - 2007 Issue
In The News: Burned Books, George Washington Baseball Cards, and the Alibris Nickel
George Washington “baseball” card offered on eBay.
You may have missed it, as there was no accompanying fanfare, but the Alibris nickel quietly faded into oblivion sometime recently. You may recall that Alibris always cut a nickel off the price of books listed on their site. This is the old marketing strategy used to sell gasoline and other products. $2.99 9/10ths appears to consumers to be significantly less than $3.00 per gallon. The book posted for $5.00 elsewhere would be $4.95 on Alibris. The $10 book would be $9.95, the $25,000 book $24,999.95. If nothing else, it gave Alibris first listing on the websites that search multiple listing sites for books. However, it must not have made a noticeable difference in sales, or at least not enough to be worth the lost five cents of revenue on every copy. Alibris made no announcement, so we do not know why the "discount" was dropped, but one can guess that they would not have made the change if the lost nickel increased sales.
One of the stranger pieces of printed, collectible ephemera showed up on eBay recently. Sports cards can be quite valuable, as anyone who ever wished to purchase an early Honus Wagner can attest. However, this was a more unusual baseball card. After all, at least Wagner played the game. This was a George Washington baseball card, which anyone familiar with the chronology of baseball and George Washington will quickly realize is logically impossible. Washington died two decades before Abner Doubleday was born. It's possible, had they overlapped, Washington would have been a great pitcher or powerful hitter. He was certainly a great general and president. Nevertheless, greatness in other fields does not always translate to baseball, as Michael Jordan's baseball career established.
This card was produced by Allen and Ginter, a division of baseball card magnate Topps, Inc. They are the ones who printed the baseball cards you remember from your youth, the ones with baseball players on them. The Allen and Ginter division has printed a series of classic cards, ones meant to look like the old baseball cards of the late 19th century. However, they have added a few surprises, including notable people from other sports, and a few from professions outside of the world of games. Like presidents.
The Washington card, however, is unusual even by their standards. Just three were printed, and each has embedded in it a strand of Washington's hair. Reportedly, Topps purchased three strands of Washington's hair from a hair collector, and inserted them in the cards. No price was given, but Washington's hair sells for a premium (like real estate, they are no longer making any). When the first of these cards surfaced and was placed on eBay, it was quickly bid up into the thousands of dollars.
Among the reactions generated by this card were "weird" and "gross." The owner reported one person wanted to buy it so he could clone Washington. This is the best idea we have heard in a long time. Can you imagine a President George W. we can all agree upon? Better yet, can you imagine a president saying, "I cannot tell a lie" without telling one? A second George Washington would be a far greater contribution to humanity than another Dolly the Sheep. Still, it is dubious that hair in baseball cards is quite in keeping with the dignity of the man. Perhaps Topps should have printed a Millard Fillmore card, he being more accustomed to presidential ridicule than the esteemed Washington.
