1927 Rinkeydink Stamps Set and Checklist

Posted on October 7, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	Rinkeydink Stamps
Year	1927
Size	1 1/4″ x 1 5/8″
Images	Color
Type	Stamps
Number in Set	10

Rinkeydink Stamps Overview

While an intriguing issue, many may question the legitimacy of the 1927 Rinkeydink set as an actual collectible.

The Rinkeydinks are certainly not cards and not even stamps. Well, at least not stamps in our traditional sense.

Fact is, in pre-war days, these actually were called stamps. These, like the Sport Stamps series that appeared in newspapers across the country, are simple cutouts from a newspaper. They do not have adhesive like stamps we know of today. They are merely paper cutouts. As only newspaper cutouts from a comic section, it’s understandable that few copies of these have survived. PSA has graded only about 20 to date.

Part of the reason for the classification as a stamp is that “Rinkeydink Stamps” is printed at the bottoms. Above it is a small cartoon picture of the player as well as their name.

All stamps have the number ‘2’ printed on them inside of a baseball. Some of the backs make reference to the ‘2nd Comic Section’ so that number could be tied to that reference. Another possibility is that, as a user pointed out to me on Twitter, the actual cost of a postage stamp was two cents in 1927. The ‘2’ could have been a nod to that price.

PSA has identified ten of these in the entire set. While only cutouts, the set has gained some measure of popularity. Part of that is because the checklist is full of Hall of Famers stars despite being a very small issue in terms of the checklist. In fact, the set includes only Hall of Famers.

The Newspapers

While these stamps were issued in newspapers, many collectors would be hard-pressed to tell you where they can be found.

But the stamps are actually found with a comic series called Winnie Winkle. Winnie Winkle was a comic series that lasted nearly 80 years. Spanning from 1920 through 1996, it nothing to do with baseball. The comic was about a working woman named Winnie Winkle. It was one of the earliest comic series to focus on women in the workplace.

If you blinked, you might miss the Rinkydink stamps. They were printed in a small corner of the entire page, which was devoted to the comic. Because of that, it is even more understandable why most would have been discarded. Aside from people that just hung onto everything, only the most shrewd collectors would know to keep such an item.

Shown here is a full sheet and if you look closely, you can spot a Walter Johnson Rinkeydink stamp in the upper right corner.

Oh Yeah, About that Name

Now that we know where the stamps originated from, one question remains — why that name?

The Rinkeydink name is somewhat confusing to most and the logic behind it isn’t immediately clear without taking the comic into account.

But the name is not some made up title. It actually ties into the comic strip because of Winkle’s brother, humorously named Perry (Periwinkle, get it? Periwi … never mind). In the comic, Perry ran around with a group of children named the Rinkeydinks. As the series developed, some of the comics were devoted to the antics of Perry and the other children.

The excerpt here from my paper shows a sign being hung to announce their new business venture — the ‘Rinkeydink Datekiff Agencey.’

Ultimately, it’s very cool that the name of the stamps tied directly into the series. Some collectors have assumed the placement of stamps was a random one and not really tied to the comics. However, that is clearly untrue and they were very much a part of the Winkle series in general.