Click here to view a gallery of Dan-Dee Potato Chips cards
The first vintage baseball card set that I completed was issued by Dan-Dee Potato Chips in 1954. There are 29 cards in the set, and 14 of them picture Cleveland Indians. Unfortunately, there are three New York Yankees in the set, proving once again that one must take the good with the bad in life.
In the late 1980s I was working in Canton, Ohio, as a sportswriter for The Repository newspaper. At that point in my collecting life I pretty much had decided to focus on Indians memorabilia. But the owner of a local card shop purchased a small group of Dan-Dees — including the Mantle card — and was eager to flip them quickly. They weren't in great shape, but that was OK, because on my budget I wasn't able to afford high-grade examples anyway.
After buying my starter group, I proceeded to seek out the cards I needed. It was and likely always will be the most fun I've ever had collecting a set. I wasn't hung up on condition (which will be obvious if you look at the gallery of cards). If a card looked presentable, I bought it and checked it off my want list. The result is that my set never will be considered a candidate for PSA's registry. But I enjoy the cards and have a lot of nice memories of searching for and finding the cards I needed.
One of those memories is when I was in Columbus covering a college baseball game. I had some time to kill and knew of Hartman's baseball card shop, which was in the general area of the game I was covering. I had been there about a year before, and they had no Dan-Dees. But Hartman's did carry a nice selection of vintage cards, so it was worth a stop.
Not only did they have a Dan-Dee that I needed, they had a Paul Smith, easily the scarcest card in the set. It was beat up, with rounded corners and multiple creases. But it was priced right at $75, and within minutes of me entering the shop, it was mine.
There are a few cards in my set that might be worth sending to PSA or SGC, but I doubt that will happen. Nor am I interested in upgrading any of the beaters. The set makes me happy just the way it is, and the memories it has provided couldn't be any better.
