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How many baseball cards Goudey sold

Dave Farquhar Baseball July 11, 2016July 3, 20181940s, Babe Ruth, baseball cards, Fleer, Goudey, Topps

A couple of years ago, former Sports Collector’s Digest editor Bob Lemke stumbled across Goudey sales figures for baseball cards in the 1930s and 1940s. He presented the figures while expressing a disinterest in doing the math to try to figure out how many cards Goudey sold.

For some insane reason I decided to take a stab at it. Or, rather, make my computer take a stab at it. And I came to some unexpected conclusions.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.

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“Super utility” tinplate train cars

Dave Farquhar Toy trains March 18, 2016January 27, 20221940s, american flyer, ives, lionel, marx, o27, tin, vintage trains

Tin train cars had a variety of methods to couple them together, but by far the most common method was a coupler commonly called tab-in-slot. The tab from one car mated with a slot in the next. All of the train manufacturers used a variant of this method at one point or another, and all of them would be able to couple together, if not for one nagging detail: height.

Dave Farquhar

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My fifth 1935 Goudey: Dazzy Vance

Dave Farquhar Baseball January 18, 2015January 10, 20151940s, cardinals, Goudey, Jimmie Foxx, Louis Browns, Major League, Major League Baseball, National League, Philadelphia Athletics, Washington Senators

As I mentioned before, four of my cards came in a single visit to a local baseball card shop. The nicest card in terms of condition that I bought in that four-card batch featured Hall of Fame pitcher Dazzy Vance, so overall it was probably the best card out of the batch as well.

Vance is the only Hall of Famer on this card, but the other three players certainly had interesting careers, even though 1935 wasn’t necessarily a highlight year for any of them.

Dave Farquhar

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Phil Kerpen, net neutrality, and socialism: A post-mortem

Dave Farquhar net.culture September 15, 2014July 4, 20161940s, 1990s, Bing, certifications, cisco, hp, internet providers, job description, journalism, Kansas City, marx, Missouri, nbc, net neutrality, netflix, university of missouri, whirlpool

I learned the hard way a few weeks ago how net neutrality can be equated with socialism, an argument that puzzles people who work on computer networks for a living and see networking as a big flow of electrons. I think it’s very important that we understand how this happens.

Here’s the tactic: Find a socialist who supports net neutrality. Anoint him the leader of the movement. Bingo, anyone who supports net neutrality follows him, and therefore is a communist.

Political lobbyist and Fox News contributor Phil Kerpen told me Robert W. McChesney was the leader of the net neutrality movement, and he sent me a quote in the form of a meme longer than the Third Epistle of St. John. Yet in a Google search for the key words from that quote, “net neutrality bring down media power structure,” I can’t find him. So then I tried Bing, where I found him quoted on a web site called sodahead.com, but I couldn’t find the primary source.

For the leader of a movement the size of net neutrality, he sure keeps a low profile. Google and Netflix are two multi-billion-dollar companies that support net neutrality. I’m sure it’s news to them that they’re taking orders from Robert W. McChesney. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Model railroading as fan fiction

Dave Farquhar model railroading, Toy trains March 15, 2014November 21, 20181940s, 1950s, lionel, lionel train

Dan Bowman sent me this a couple of weeks ago, and I found myself agreeing with it: Model railroading is a form of fan fiction.

It seems like a good way to look at it. Every model railroad is a compromise. By my rough estimations, it’s 4.1 miles from Dupo, Illinois to Cahokia, but even if you model in Z scale, you’ll need 97 linear feet to model that line. I would think it would be very difficult to build a Z scale layout of that size–it would take a huge basement–and only put two towns on it. So, at the very least, people put their towns closer together and use a fast clock to make up for the compression. Some people compromise a lot more than that. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Finding a connection to my Dad in a suburban St. Louis estate

Dave Farquhar Toy trains March 1, 2014December 5, 20151940s, 1950s, lionel, marx, paper model, train layout, train table

Yesterday I wrote about my greatest estate sale find ever. Well, the very same month as that one, I found another estate sale featuring a Lionel 1110 locomotive, which happened to be my Dad’s first train. So of course I put that sale on my list. The 1110 wasn’t among Lionel’s finest moments, but I’ll note that in 1986 when Dad and I pulled his postwar Lionels out of storage, it was the first of Dad’s locomotives that we got running, and in 2003 when I got them out again, it was the only one that still ran.

Well, this 1110 didn’t run. The motor assembly was cracked and it wasn’t worth the asking price. But behind the locomotive, I found some paperwork. “Build these realistic models!” it urged. It was marked $4. The tag warned it was very delicate. I took it out of the plastic bag it was in, decided against trying to unfold it, and bought it unseen. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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My greatest estate find

Dave Farquhar Toy trains February 28, 2014March 25, 20221940s, 1950s, 1960s, american flyer, estate sales, marx, survivors, tin

If you’ve been reading this blog for a few years, you know I kind of like trains. But my favorite way to buy them isn’t to buy them at a train store. I like to buy them from estates.

One week, I spotted a few late-production Marx 6-inch cars and a plastic locomotive in an estate ad. I tallied up $30 worth of trains in the picture, and figured I’d be lucky if they asked $60 for it. But I decided to take another look at the picture, just in case.

This wasn’t an ordinary train. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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There are several things to like about the Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized May 17, 2013May 16, 20131940s, 1950s, antenna, cable tv, New York, New York City, VCR

The Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013 is coming soon to a Senate near you, and there are several things in it worth paying attention to.

Dave Farquhar

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“It’s your happy place.”

Dave Farquhar model railroading, Toy trains May 15, 2013January 12, 20211940s, atmosphere, marx, tin, toy train, train layout, wyandotte

Someone told me today that she didn’t quite get the appeal of model railroading, that it must be a male thing. And that’s fair: Model railroads were first invented by a dollhouse maker so they would have something to market to boys. That company still markets trains, but no longer markets dollhouses, so I guess you could say it was successful.

Here’s how I summed up the appeal.

Dave Farquhar

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Clean up the white goop on postwar Lionel and American Flyer with a hair dryer

Dave Farquhar Toy trains February 15, 2013December 11, 20201940s, 1950s, american flyer, lionel, Lionel Scout, postwar lionel

I picked up some dilapidated postwar American Flyer wheels at the local train store this afternoon to fix up some stuff from my junk box. The wheels were covered in milky white goo/powder/gunk/residue/stuff–whatever you want to call it. Almost anything molded of black plastic–wheels, couplers, truck sides–by Lionel or American Flyer in the 1940s and 1950s is prone to this. Fortunately, the fix is easy. Aim a hair dryer on high at it, and watch the whiteness melt away, leaving clean plastic behind.

Dave Farquhar

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