Wednesday, October 24, 2012

File Under "Gelman, Woody"

BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd recently alerted me to an eBay auction, since halted by the seller, of a reconstructed 1958 Baseball One Cent box that came from Woody Gelman's files.  Shep thinks it would have been a flat, so the seller folded it into a box (grrrrrr!!).  The provenance is quite obvious:




















You can see the baseball contest ad on the back panel.  It's the front flap though, that is quite intriguing:













We've seen the insert card version of the contest before. The contest to my mind served two purposes:

1) Sell more Bazooka and Blony;

2) Find out where entrants live in an early data mining exercise.

I'm not sure if $5 a week for six months was a better deal than a 17 inch portable TV back in 1958!


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