1933 Goudey Sport Kings Gum #33 Eddie Burke

You can’t fully understand this card without reading… This link about the 1933 Goudey Sport Kings set as a whole.

The Card:  Just like the previous card in the set, the #32 Joe “Lopchick,” the reverse features the hyphenated “Basket-Ball,” which doesn’t appear this way on the earlier Nat Holman card of the set.  This is certainly a relic of the 1930’s as is some of the wording on the back of the card.  The final information that he has “deadly accuracy in shooting the ball into the basket” is certainly dated in a pleasant way.  Also, don’t let the 1934 copyright confuse you.  The set is typically referred to as the “1933 Sport Kings,” but this is one of the cards whose production ran into the following year.  The fact that three cards in this set (Nat Holman, Joe Lapchik, Eddie Burke) feature the Original Celtics of New York, you begin to have an idea of how dominate they were in the basketball world during this time.  The PSA website says that they won over 90% of their games.

The 2001 Standard Catalog of Basketball Cards lists a Near Mint at $250, a NM/M at $595 and a Mint at $1700.  Value has risen steadily!  A PSA 2.5 sold for $203.50  on June 23, 2018 (eBay item 352381758142).

In Short:  We now have all four of them! 1933 Goudey Sport Kings, the first four professional basketball players ever featured on sports cards! Such early, entertaining history! Nat Holman wrote books on basketball discussing adding the backboard to prevent fans from hitting the ball out. Ed Wachter is referred to as the greatest center who ever lived, remember, Bill Russell wasn’t even born when this card was printed! Poor Joe Lapchik is the first major error because his name is Lapchik, not Lopchik. And, look at this, we go back in time to when a card company debated whether to hyphenate “basket-ball” or not. Look here, two without and two with! And this Eddie Burke specifies that he had “deadly accuracy in shooting the ball into the basket” just in case “shooting” or “shooting the ball” still left you wondering. Subscribe and collect with us! Or look up these cards and set on your own! Such fun history here!