One of my favorite baseball card trivia questions concerns the four subjects with cards in both the T206 and 1933 Goudey sets, issued more than 20 years apart. (Advance the slideshow to see the answer.)
A related question that I’ve not seen answered, hence will do so here, is which subjects appear in both 1933 Goudey and 1952 Topps. Here it turns out the number is greater than four, though the variety is less than what’s seen between T206 and Goudey. (Advance the slideshow to see the answer.)
Before going too much further I should note that the answer above may depend on how one defines “appear” as one of the subjects above has a 1952 Topps card that shows someone else. I’ll also note that all of the six subjects above crack the 1952 Topps checklist as coaches (Chapman, Dickey, Herman, Crosetti) or managers (Durocher, Richards). In other words, there is no “Jack Quinn” in the bunch, though there could have been.
Per Baseball-Reference, two players were active major leaguers in 1933 and 1952:
- Dutch Leonard
- Satchel Paige
Leonard made the Topps checklist but not the Goudey while Paige missed out on both, or more accurately both missed out on him! We might also offer a shout-out to Bobo Newson who played from 1929 to 1953 minus 1931, 1933, and 1949-51 while appearing in neither set.
Readers might also assign “almost” status to a whole cadre of 1933 Goudey players who coached or managed in 1952 but did not earn cards. This is a list I’d love to see but not quite enough to compile it myself. Rather, I’ll go a different route and assign my personal silver medal as follows:
And yes, I’m quite aware both sets have cards of Sam Jones (different players of course), but I still like this one better!
