Lot # 17: Rare 1933 George C. Miller Complete SGC-Graded Set (32)

Category: Featured Items

Starting Bid: $1,500.00

Bids: 14 (Bid History)

Time Left: Auction closed


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Item was in Auction "Fall, 2014 Premier Auction",
which ran from 10/10/2014 4:00 AM to
11/2/2014 8:43 AM



Boston MA confectioner George C. Miller & Co keeping up with its local competitors Goudey and National Chicle issued a 32-card baseball card set along with packages of its toffee in 1933. The set contained 16 American League and 16 National League players and was issued as part of a much larger promotion where youngsters could collect complete sets and then redeem them for prizes. The company would then cancel the cards (with a hole punch or by clipping the bottom third of the card) and then return them to the collector with their prize. Due to the company's regional distribution these cards are much more scarce than their Goudey or National Chicle counterparts. Additionally the prevalence of cancelled cards makes uncancelled examples all the more scarce. Additionally the cards are traditionally found at the very low end of the grading scale - cards in EX-MT condition are better are virtually nonexistent unike many other issues of the era. All these factors make the compilation of a complete George C. Miller set a hobby rarity. Finding an example or two for a type or Hall of Fame collection can be a challenge. Completing all 32 cards is a completely different story. Doing so requires tracking down the 31 "common" cards in the set - a chore in and of itself that includes 19 expensive Hall of Famers - and also requires obtaining the very rare Ivy Andrews card. Taking a page from Goudey's playbook (who did something similar in 1933 with card #106 of Nap Lajoie) the George C. Miller company withheld all but a few of the Ivy Andrews cards. This prevented them from ever having to fulfill large numbers of prize redemptions. Today even after a modest find of canceled Andrews cards in the 1980s the card is a significant rarity. Presented is a complete basic set of 1933 George C. Miller cards INCLUDING the rare Ivy Andrews card. While the overall set score is just 13.88 this does not tell the whole story as all but three of the cards have attained numerical grades (a rarity unto itself) and none but the Andrews has been cancelled. The set is so rare that just four other complete graded sets exist on either the PSA or SGC Registry two of which were sold at auction in past years and never deleted. A condition breakdown of the set's contents is as follows: SGC VG 40 (2 cards):<

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