Pre-War Cards Site 1940s Expansion Complete

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Pre-War Cards

The Pre-War Cards site now catalogs sets through 1947

So, a while back, I had this idea to expand the site to include more sets. As I said at the time, while my idea of a pre-war card goes through 1939 (the start of World War II), I realize that other collectors classify them as running through 1945 (the end of the war). I generally disagree with that assertion but the point is to make the site inclusive of sets that people view as pre-war — not necessarily my own warped views.

For that reason, I decided a little over a year ago to include sets through 1945. And since that left such a small window to the beginning of what people consider to be the post-WWII era cards (1948), I just figured I’d include sets through 1947. That really makes a very distinctive break between ‘modern’ sets and pre-war sets, even if some of those (1946 and 1947) should not be pre-war by anyone’s definition.

I’d mostly put off the project just because I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about it. Set reviews, to me, are not all that fun. They can be cumbersome, annoying, and just not much fun. But starting last month, I really got serious and basically wrapped things up this weekend.

The real big ones, like 1940 Play Ball, 1941 Play Ball, 1941 Double Play, and 1941 Goudey, for example, have been there for some time. But the past couple of months, I’ve really dug into the weeds a bit more to find a bunch of others.

The result is about 50 new sets added to the site. That may not seem like a lot for eight sports across eight years (1940 through 1947) but, of course, there were few sets issued during that time.

Further, while there are no doubt additional sets out there to catalog that will need to be added, this was really the bulk of the important ones. More should and will be added as time goes on but the main ones should be here now.

Should you notice others during that time (that included the eight main sports this site covers — baseball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, boxing, and wrestling), please let me know. Trust me — for as much as I may not really enjoy the set reviews, they are important … more important than the drivel I spew in the blog articles. They need to be there. I am sure plenty more exist and I will find some. But others, particularly international issues, surely are there and will be outside of my knowledge.

That will be it for major expansion for a while. There are a few large-scale projects I’d like to consider for the future but for now, I’m looking forward to getting back to writing blog articles, which have been fewer since I’ve been putting time into the research for the new set reviews.

Enjoy —