This super rare baseball card features Napoleon Lajoie missing from the original 1933 Goudey trading card set.
AUCTION PREVIEW: 1933 Goudey Napoleon Lajoie #106 PSA NM 7 card is for sale at the Heritage Auctions May 7 – 9, 2020 Spring Sports Collectibles Catalog Auction #50026.
In 1933, it was not unheard of for baseball card manufacturers to leave a card or two out of circulation in order to entice customers to keep buying packs in hopes of finding these ever-elusive collection finishers. Such is speculated to be the case with card 106 in the 1933 Goudey set, one of the “big three” card sets in the hobby. In response to complaints, Goudey offered this Napoleon Lajoie card to customers who wrote to the company the following year. The relative few who did so, combined with damage inflicted to many of the cards by the paper clips that attached them to response letters, has led to the 1933 Napoleon Lajoie card becoming known alongside the T206 Honus Wagner as one of the rarest and most sought-after individual baseball cards of all time.
Napoleon Lajoie had been retired for more than two decades at the time of this card’s issuing, prompting many to wonder why he was featured as the missing card in the set. There were many prestigious former greats to consider for the card, from Ty Cobb to Walter Johnson to Honus Wagner. Well, Napoleon Lajoie isn’t as well known today as these legends to the layman, but back in 1933, people still remembered that he was unquestionably one of the all-time greats of the sport. He is one of twenty players to ever bat .400 or better in a season, perhaps the greatest defensive second baseman of all time, and is the only player to have his team literally named after him.
You heard right; such was his popularity that his team renamed itself in his honor. In 1901, the upstart American League rose to challenge the entrenched National League. Lajoie, the most famous baseball player at the time, jumped ship from the NL to the AL and joined the Cleveland Broncos. Two years later in 1903, the Broncos changed their name to the Napoleons, or the “Naps” for short. Lajoie actually managed the team as a player-manager from 1905 to 1909. In 1914, when he left for the Athletics, the Naps changed their name once again to an old nickname from the 19th century, the Cleveland Spiders, and again later to the Indians. Yes, today’s Cleveland Indians were once the Cleveland Napoleons. No other player in big league history has, or likely ever will share this distinction.
Browse the auction: 1933 Goudey Napoleon Lajoie #106 PSA NM 7