1926 Spalding Champions Set and Checklist

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	Spalding Champions (Sports Company of America)
Year	1926
Size	1 1/2″ x 2 1/4″
Images	Black and White
Type	Trade
Number in Set	210

1926 Spalding Champions Overview

Flournoy Football 1926 Spalding Champions

The 1926 Spalding Champions set is a multi-sport release with athletes in a number of sports, including baseball and football.

The baseball players are the most popular and there are 48 of them in the entire set. But the set includes some nice older football cards as well, which are popular with collectors.

Football cards of Friedman and Nevers are particularly interesting since they are Hall of Famers and their earliest recognized cards.

In addition to baseball and football, boxing, golf, and tennis are also featured with many big names from those sports.

1926 Spalding Walter Hagen Golf

The fronts include a black and white picture of the athlete in question. Backs can be found blank, with an advertisement for the Sports Company of America, or with a biography of the player shown on the front.

The ad-backed cards encouraged collectors to save the cards and then send five in along with $.50 (money order or stamps) in exchange for a blue and gold album that has spaces for all 200 of the cards in the set along with their ‘records.’ As noted, below, while the backs advertised 200 cards, there are actually 210 known in the set.

A few variations are found in the set as well. Some cards (Babe Ruth is one) are marked with a 1926 copyright date while others have a 1927 date.

The cards are not extremely plentiful but not overly rare, either. PSA has graded about 1,000 of them to date.

Classifying the cards is not entirely easy, either. While some collectors have classified them as a trade card of sorts, they are different from many other traditional trade issues. They could also be cataloged as a U-Card, which covers miscellaneous issues.