1945-46 Carmelo Deportivo Cuban Baseball Card Album and Card Set (100)

Bidding

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/4/2024

At a time that was clearly the heyday of Cuban baseball, this set of “cards” affixed to the dramatically colorful album is perhaps the most widely sought artifact from the fabled Cuban Winter League that would routinely attract a host of great Cuban and Black stars, along with some major leaguers of note, often on their way up or back down from The Big Show. The 8 ½-by-10-inch album has 16 pages (a few are detached from the spine) with the 99 cards reasonably well affixed inside, featuring a lineup that includes several Hall of Famers and numerous Cuban stars from the period. Among the imposing roster that includes HOFers are Minnie Minoso, Ray Dandridge, Raymond Brown and Martin Dihigo, legendary Cuban baseball manager Mike Gonzales, Luis Tiant Sr., and major leaguers Sal Maglie, Dick Sisler and Dolph Luque, to name a few. The album is technically in Poor condition because of some paper loss, but actually presents a bit better, and the inside pages with the 1 7/8-by-2 5/8-inch cards affixed are even better than that. The card set, while officially complete at 100 cards, is widely regarded by collectors as complete at 99, since card No. 73 Nap Reyes is so difficult to find (and is missing from this set). As Goudey and some other smaller American card makers would occasionally do, the Reyes card was withheld from regular distribution, requiring Herculean efforts by collectors to snag one from the factory itself. The “cards” are printed on a thin card stock, with black-and-white photo on the front and biographical information and confectioner Carmelo Deportivo on the back.