From 1948 through 1952, an Indians program at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium cost ten cents. A pencil for keeping score cost ten cents, too. And on each pencil was a clip with a photo of one of the Indians.
In a 1981 letter, Bill Veeck wrote: “The reason we used the pencil clips was to control the sale of pencils and scorebooks. However, we found we increased our sales because the fans wanted the pictures of all the players, and actually hundreds of thousands on them were sold.”
Today, the clips are very scarce. It took our consignor 20+ years to piece together the offered near set of (81/90) pieces. Highlights include:
1948 Pencil Clips near: (15/20, average NM, missing Edwards, Geitel, Lemon, E. Robinson, Seery) with Boudreau (NM), Doby (NM), Feller (NM), Gordon (NM);
1949 Pencil Clips set: (20/20, average EX-MT to NM) with Boudreau (NM), Doby (NM), Feller (EX-MT), Gordon (NM), Lemon (EX-MT), Paige (EX-MT), Veeck (NM), Wynn (EX-MT);
1950 Pencil Clips set: (19/19, average EX-MT to NM, with uncatalogued Clark) with Boudreau (NM), Doby (NM), Feller (EX-MT), Lemon (NM), Rosen (NM), Wynn (EX-MT);
1950 Blue Pencil Clips set: (12/12, average EX-MT) with Doby (EX-MT), Feller (EX-MT), Lemon (EX), Lopez (NM), Rosen (EX-MT), Wynn (NM);
1952 Pencil Clips near: (15/19, average NM to NM-MT, missing Brissie, Gromek, Reiser, Rosen) with Doby (NM-MT), Feller (NM-MT), Lemon (NM), Wynn (EX)