"What's in Ted's Wallet?" Author JB Manheim on the Sunbury Press Books Show!

Baseball cards were collected, traded, and used in games we made up as kids. In recent decades, however, the collectibles market has turned these into a multi-million-dollar business. They are the stuff of memories, the object of historians, and an addition to some people's portfolios. A recent discovery of a rare set of T206 cards sold in cigarette packs in the early 20th century has become a book, "What's in Ted's Wallet?" The owner of these cards was Theodore "Ted" Edison, the youngest son of Thomas Alva Edison. In the summer of 1909, Ted began collecting these cards and soon amassed a collection of 61, including 58 players. Many of them ended up in the Baseball Hall of Fame, such as Ty Cobb, Frank Chance, Walter Johnson, and Christy Mathewson. He kept them in a wallet made that year, and they were found among Ted's donated papers in the 1990s. When J.B. Manheim and co-author Lawrence Knorr found these during archival research on Edison and baseball, they knew they had a book! J.B. Manheim is Professor Emeritus at The George Washington University, where he developed the world's first degree-granting program in political communication. He is also the founding director of the School of Media & Public Affairs. He is the author of "The Deadball Files," a five-volume series on the early years of professional baseball in the 20th century. He is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and International Thriller Writers.