Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

1935 UM7 Rice-Stix Overview

In 1935, Rice-Stix produced a two-card promotional card set featuring baseball brothers Dizzy Dean and Paul Dean. Rice-Stix was a St. Louis shirt manufacturer.

The two cards featuring the Dean brothers was actually created with images from a joint photo of the pair, which can be seen here. That picture was a copyrighted image from 1934 by H.A. Meade via Grand Stand Photo and courtesy of the local St. Louis Post-Dispatch, as stated on the front of the cards.

The fronts included a color picture of the player taken from that photo as well as their replica signature. Backs included a short biography.

The cards are hard to find with the only known copies believed to have been inserted into packages of the company’s shirt. That is evident from the message on the back of the cards, which states that a card of the other brother exists. The text says that cards can be found in ‘some’ of the packages of shirts, leading us to believe that one was not given with every shirt.

About the Shirts

A box of four shirts that were discovered went up for auction. It is a larger box that looks as if it was intended for stores rather than for individual sale. But the shirts are interesting in that they were polo shirts featuring the same images stitched onto them.

Also note that, per this thread on Net54, some sort of a photograph premium exists as well. The picture features both brothers using the same poses as Meade’s original picture. It is not known how this larger photo was distributed.

The shirts, by the way, are not so great to look at.

1935 UM Rice-Stix Checklist

1. Dizzy Dean
2. Paul Dean