Cards Of The Natural

I was watching The Natural on Sunday night after the Oscars and after Roy Hobbs/Robert Redford first breaks out into baseball super stardom it flashes to a scene of Roy Hobbs baseball cards hot off the presses.


As the cards flashed by they looked like 1940 Play Ball cards but in color. I was pretty familiar with the black and white cards that make up the main Play Ball set from 1940 and so I thought that they just sort of fudged it for the movie because no one would want to look at black and white cards rolling out of the factory.

1940 Playball #40 Hank Greenberg


Well, I consulted my gigantic 2008 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards which has damn near every baseball card ever made listed. It turns out Play Ball did actually make a few color version of the 1940 cards and it is speculated that these were tests for the colorized 1941 set. If you can lay your hands on a color "Daffy" Dean you could get over $2,000 at auction.

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