Previously Unknown 1916 M101 Ruth Rookie with Elusive Advertising Back Slated for REA’s Final 2024 Sale
By P.J. Kinsella
After more than three decades in the healthcare industry, Jeff Gross is more than a little accustomed to surrounding himself with people committed to helping others. After a chance encounter while working at a family garage sale, Jeff found himself taking on the role of helper in the most unlikely of ways.
Growing up outside of Boston, Jeff was exposed to sports and their rich history from a very young age. A die-hard sports fan to this day, he can be described as a fan of all things baseball. In his basement is a personal sanctuary created as a tribute to the game he loves, complete with a 5-foot long and 3-foot high black-and-white Temple Cup reproduction print on one wall. Visitors can sit and take in the scene on a modern day leather lounge chair on one side or an original Fenway Park stadium seat on the other. In between are shelves and cabinets full of collectibles depicting Boston legends, baseball greats, and Jeff's children and nephew on homemade trading cards memorializing their time on the diamond growing up in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
If you get an invitation to visit Jeff's shrine, you'll also have to open a pack of cards from his miniature store-like display tucked in the corner. On the day we visited Jeff, the packs up for grabs were 1989 Fleer. Would there be a Billy Ripken error card inside? Jeff looked on with a palpable sense of excitement - part curiosity, part joy, but all exuding an obvious passion for the sport, the collectibles, and the desire to share with others.
Jeff Gross and his wife Cindy during a private tour at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The passion is something that Jeff is very proud of and cannot - does not - want to contain. If an opportunity comes up to talk about sports, he’s going to take it, and if an opportunity arises to talk about baseball cards - a hobby he’s enjoyed for more than five decades - he’s all in. Sitting in the driveway of a family member’s house late last year, Jeff got the opportunity to do both when a gentleman biked up the driveway to inspect the items neatly displayed for sale. As a collector, Jeff knew there could be value in all different types of things, and the downsizing garage sale was an idea to find value before making the tough decision to throw things away.
The gentleman on the bike - we’ll call him John for easy reference - was out that day on a combination of exercise and treasure hunting. But as all involved would come to learn, it was in his own home that a massive treasure lurked. As he perused the sale, John struck up a conversation with Jeff. It quickly turned to sports, then collecting, and then baseball cards before John mentioned a small box of old baseball cards that his dad had passed along to him. As Jeff recalls, once John “started talking about his old baseball card collection, it immediately caught my attention.” John biked home to pick up a few sample cards, which included T206 commons, to show to Jeff. Knowing the cards were from the 1910-era, Jeff encouraged him to spend some time inventorying the cards and offered his assistance in the endeavor. They exchanged information, but a few months passed before the conversation picked back up again.
John was never a big collector himself, tallying only a couple dozen cards in his youth, mostly of his favorite players, Carl Yastrzemski and Tony Conigliaro. He also accumulated a few members of the Dallas Cowboys, who were on television far more frequently than the hometown Boston Patriots of the 1960s. He was raised in a family that did house buyouts as a part-time job, buying furniture and antiques to sell in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts. Over the years, his parents accumulated a large collection of antiques that lived in the basement of their house for many years throughout John’s life. “Even my mother was really good at pinpointing the value of an antique,” John recalls.
The opportunity to prepare an inventory for Jeff was the first time John spent any meaningful time with the cards. He remembers seeing the card collection in a box among the antiques but never learned where they came from or exactly when his father got them.
“My father was planning to sell the cards as well as the antiques to help pay for retirement, but he just never got around to doing anything with the baseball cards.” His father did, however, keep somewhat of a rolling checklist of the cards as John found price guide pages for the T206 set with checkmarks next to most of the players’ names. As John would come to find out, the collection included hundreds of tobacco, caramel, and other cards issued during the 1910s and 1920s as well as some newer cards from the 1940s and 1950s.
After reconnecting with Jeff, the two made arrangements to get together to review John’s inventory and some more of the cards in person. John’s detailed spreadsheet contained tabs broken down by set. Jeff gravitated towards some of the more well-known sets - would there be a Wagner listed on the T206 page, he wondered. Some great names from baseball’s past jumped out to him - there was Mathewson and Cobb as well as Lajoie and Comiskey.
It wasn’t until he saw a tab labeled Morehouse Baking that he really stopped in his tracks. “I recognized many Hall of Famers on the list for this set, but the Morehouse name didn’t immediately register with me,” Jeff remembered. “The images of the cards I had seen many times before, and I was familiar with the Sporting News version, but I had never seen a Morehouse card in person.”
This example of the M101-4/5 Morehouse Baking #151 Babe Ruth Rookie, which has been graded VG+ 3.5 by PSA, will headline REA's Fall 2024 Catalog Auction
Jeff was definitely not alone. While some vintage enthusiasts would be familiar with the M101-4/5 series, even many seasoned collectors would not have recognized the Morehouse Baking name and for good reason. Fewer than ninety examples from this obscure bakery have ever been authenticated by PSA or SGC, and only a small fraction of those cards have ever been offered for auction. Since 2003, REA has only sold six. Determined to learn more, Jeff set off on a research quest, not only to boost his own knowledge and understanding but to better help John understand exactly what he had and its potential value.
The back of the newly discovered 1916 M101-4/5 Morehouse Baking #151 Babe Ruth Rookie PSA VG+ 3.5
In 1916, Chicago-area publisher Felix Mendelsohn designed and distributed a 200-card set of baseball cards distinguished from other sets of the era by crisp black-and-white, real-photo images. Virtually all the stars of the day were featured within the set, including Boston Red Sox rookie pitcher Babe Ruth. Originally issued with blank backs, the cards were made available to various other companies throughout the country to use and remarket with their own advertising on the reverse. Most notably, The Sporting News capitalized on this opportunity, marking cards with advertising for “The Baseball Paper of the World.” In total, eighteen different companies are known to have used cards in their own promotions and printed advertisements on the backs of these cards.
Nestled in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Morehouse Baking Company was one of those advertisers that saw partnering its products with baseball cards as a way to drive sales. The city of Lawrence was, at that time, bustling with production. With a population of nearly 100,000 people, its strategic location along the Merrimack River made it an ideal location for manufacturers, mills, and trade that relied on movement along its 117-mile length from the Atlantic Ocean through northern Massachusetts and into New Hampshire. It had developed a reputation as one of the world’s leading textile hubs, and its city streets were dotted with brick factories and smokestacks signaling a robust level of activity as a cog in the larger wheel of early twentieth century commerce.
Employees of Morehouse/Sunlight Bakery pose for a photo with delivery trucks in the background. -Photo courtesy Lawrence History Center, Lawrence, MA.
The decision was made to promote the bakery’s Sunlight Bread. For ten cents, a fresh loaf would be sold with a baseball card inside. To further incentivize the area youth to demand the Sunlight Bread from their parents, the company devised a promotional giveaway that promised one of two items sure to appeal to any kid in 1916 - a jump rope or a baseball and bat. Once you acquired fifty cards, you could present them at the company’s office, located at 7 Mill Street in Lawrence, and claim your prize. As an added bonus, you’d keep the cards as well, but not before the company marked them as redeemed to prevent any enterprising kids from double-dipping on the offer.
Today’s baseball card hobbyists most closely associate the cards produced by Felix Mendelsohn with The Sporting News based on the large supply of those cards in the marketplace. There is a hierarchy of scarcity among the advertising backs, though, thanks to research by collectors Todd Schultz and Tim Newcombe. Based on their 2017 analysis, Morehouse Baking ranked thirteenth of eighteen, ahead of noted rarities, such as Mall Theatre, Burgess-Nash, Successful Farming, and Holmes to Homes. Other advertisers can be found with varying degrees of success, including Famous & Barr, Block & Kuhl, Altoona Tribune, and Green-Joyce.
Armed with all this information, Jeff was excited to share his findings with John. What they both knew was an exciting collection was now much more significant - not only in terms of value but also in terms of what it represented to the hobby. With more than 100 Morehouse Baking cards accounted for in John’s shoebox, there would be dozens of cards that the hobby would see for the very first time.
As part of the Morehouse promotion, people could redeem 50 of the cards with Morehouse Baking backs and receive either a jump rope or a miniature baseball bat and ball. The "Cancelled" stamp indicated cards had already been redeemed.
The two men, now bonded by century-old bakery cards, sat down to review the information. There was, however, a twist. As detailed as John’s inventory was, he’d only inventoried the cards that were at his house. He’d omitted some cards that were displayed in his office, and he wanted to update Jeff’s list before they got started. They were cards of players who he recognized - Tinkers, Evers, Chance, Thorpe, Jackson, and Ruth. Two Ruths, in fact.
“Don’t worry, we had good security,” John joked. It was at that moment that Jeff, already excited by what he’d learned in the course of his research, was blown away. He knew that John was considering selling the cards, but now it was bigger than either of them could have imagined. There needed to be a plan.
In addition to the Babe Ruth rookie, REA's Fall Catalog Auction will include 100+ cards from this incredibly elusive set, notably Shoeless Joe Jackson and Jim Thorpe. A second Babe Ruth rookie will be offered as part of REA's Spring 2025 Catalog Auction.
Navigating this unprecedented collection would take even more time and research than had already been invested. The questions swirled. What could this be worth? What’s the best way to sell these? Where is the best place to sell them? Who can we trust? Many of these questions came from John, but he wasn’t sure if he knew the best way to answer them or if he had the time to make sure he left no stone unturned. The world of baseball cards was far removed from his day to day experiences, and he was never much of a collector himself. He decided that Jeff would be best positioned to assist him in this endeavor. They’d built a great rapport in a relatively short period of time, and the passion Jeff exhibited about the cards would certainly carry over to the next phase. They agreed that Jeff would serve as John’s agent and deliver to him proposals about how to best position the collection for sale.
Weeks of research about the selling side of the hobby ensued. “I am 2% seller and 98% collector in my own collecting,” says Jeff. He’d participated in a number of online auctions as he built his own collection but never consigned. As he voraciously consumed all the information he could find about auctions online through social media, message boards, and company websites, he decided that he had to take the research into the real world. He booked a trip to Cleveland for the 2024 National Sports Collectors Convention. He’d spend a few days walking the convention floor, meeting with collectors, dealers, and auctioneers. Full immersion was the goal.
The convention was, as it is for many, sensory overload. Hundreds of tables, tens of thousands of people, and not enough time in the day to see everything. But the mission was clear, and Jeff hit the ground running. It was easy enough for him to strike up a conversation, and he went to numerous tables to pick the brains of those set up behind them. He had some pictures on his phone that, if the conversation went well enough, he’d break out to show he was serious. When he arrived at the REA booth, he started chatting with a sales representative and ultimately shared some pictures of John’s tobacco cards and 1940s Hall of Famers. A short time later, company president Brian Dwyer overheard the conversation and introduced himself to Jeff. The two got to talking and eventually the Morehouse Baking cards came up. For Brian, who has decades of experience in the area of vintage baseball, they registered immediately.
“I knew very quickly that there was something special here,” said Brian. “I’ve handled numerous Babe Ruth rookie cards from the M101-4/5 series over the years, and I didn’t recall ever hearing about - let alone seeing - a Morehouse Baking Ruth.” After nearly an hour of chatting, Jeff continued his exploration around the convention, vowing to stay in touch with REA, just as John did with him months earlier.
The rare Babe Ruth card in front of the building that once held the Morehouse Baking Company
When Jeff returned to Massachusetts, there was a greater level of information to share with John. “I went back and broke out my white board like I do with other deals at work.” The two men meticulously outlined the prospective sale from every angle. There were follow up calls with REA and the other auction houses Jeff visited. “In the end, it was a pretty obvious choice,” said Jeff. “Everything went great with Brian. He was knowledgeable, trustworthy, and felt very well-informed.”
A short time later, Brian, Jeff, and John met in Lawrence, Massachusetts, home of the Morehouse Baking Company, to finalize the consignment of the collection to REA. “I can’t think of another consignment where I’ve been able to go back to square one like that,” said Brian. “It was incredibly special to stand at the base of the Morehouse factory with these monumental cards.”
In total, 119 cards featuring the Morehouse Baking advertisement are featured within the collection, representing more than half of a complete set. This makes the collection the single largest assembly of Morehouse Baking cards in the hobby and the most sizable group ever to be available at auction. Twenty-four Hall of Famers highlight the collection, including two examples of the #151 Babe Ruth, which are the first confirmed examples of this iconic Ruth card featuring this advertisement.
Also included are several noteworthy members of the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox,” including Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, and Hap Felsch, as well as a card of the legendary Jim Thorpe. PSA has graded several of the cards from the collection. One Babe Ruth grades VG+ 3.5, making it one of the highest-graded Babe Ruth rookies to feature an advertising back ever offered. The Joe Jackson, which is also the first example authenticated by any grading company, grades GOOD+ 2.5.
Notably, every card in this collection is stamped “Cancelled” on the reverse, signaling that they were, at one time, presented to the company in exchange for the listed prizes. Whether these cards were kept together by someone at the Morehouse Bakery or if they stayed together from a single collector, who must have enjoyed them alongside both the jump rope and baseball bat and ball, has been lost to time. It’s a fun question to ponder, and Jeff and John have envisioned a Lawrence-area kid running around in 1916 trying to get all these cards. Now, with the collection slated for REA’s Fall Auction in November (duplicates and the second Ruth rookie will run in REA’s Spring Catalog Auction in April), they envision collectors will share the same enthusiasm for this special group of cards.
“It wasn’t until my chance meeting with Jeff that I truly realized the collection’s real value,” said John. For Jeff, that chance encounter has changed the trajectory of his hobby pursuits. As a full-time business advisor in the healthcare industry, he’s called upon frequently to size up situations and offer his best advice. He believes there’s a place for him to leverage his hobby and business experiences and has launched JeffGrossVintageBaseball.com to help people like John with their collections as they consider their next moves. While this collection is the first that he’s worked on in such a capacity, it's provided him with exciting experience already that he’s looking forward to applying with future clients.
In a story filled with chance encounters and notable firsts, there’s one more that cannot go unmentioned. While John was inventorying his collection, he found a copy of the 2001 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards among his father’s possessions. Inside was a newspaper ad for REA from 1994, pulled from an antiques publication and used as a bookmark. The ad featured an image of Babe Ruth. Now, thirty years later, it’s John’s own Babe Ruth that will come to auction and stand out as a featured item in REA advertisements for years to come.
Who says you can’t be romantic about baseball…and baseball cards?
This story was originally published on Sports Collectors Daily.