Jim Umbricht was considered one of the greatest and most prolific baseball card collectors of all time. From a young age in the 1940s, Umbricht became fascinated with collecting and studying the early baseball cards from the late 19th century through the early 20th century. He would spend decades amassing one of the largest and most comprehensive collections ever assembled, containing cards that helped transform our understanding of the early history of the sport.
Umbricht was born in 1930 in Decatur, Illinois. As a boy growing up in the 1940s, he became interested in collecting the newer baseball cards that were produced during the 1930s and 1940s by companies like Goudey and Old Judge. He quickly grew fascinated with the antique baseball cards produced from the late 1800s through the 1910s by cigarette and tobacco companies like Bullock, Pierce, Mayo Cut Plug, and Billy Hamilton. These early cards captured his imagination and he was determined to locate and acquire as many of them as possible.
In the postwar era of the late 1940s and 1950s, very few collectors paid much attention to the early cigarette cards. Most focused on sets from the modern 1930s and 1940s, as the antique cards from the 19th century were thought lost or destroyed. However, Umbricht diligently searched flea markets, antique stores, card shows, and anywhere else he could potentially find remnants of these early sets. He was able to acquire many rare and one-of-a-kind baseball cards from this era that were previously unknown to the collecting community.
His collection grew rapidly as he explored new avenues of research. He scoured newspapers, magazines, and libraries for any information that could lead him to obscured players and sets. He even traveled across the country visiting relatives and contacts to search attics, basements, and unsorted collections for overlooked gems. By the late 1950s, Umbricht had amassed what was considered the world’s largest and finest collection of 19th century baseball cards, containing examples that rewrote sections of the sport’s early history.
Some of the highlights of Umbricht’s magnificent collection included a 1886/87 Old Judge cigarette card of Pete Browning, considered the earliest baseball card produced and one of the most coveted in the hobby. He also had an unmatched run of Tobacco Premium and Mayo Cut Plug cards from the 1889-1891 seasons, historically significant sets that were previously thought incomplete or non-existent. His collection featured very rare early 20th century cards like an uncut sheet of the ultra-elusive 1909 E90 series, as well as pristine examples of superb condition stars from the T206 and E90 tobacco era sets.
In total, Umbricht’s baseball card collection contained over 5,000 unique cards from the 19th and early 20th centuries, encompassing an unmatched breadth and depth of knowledge of this highly obscured early period in card history. He meticulously organized and catalogued every aspect of his collection, with extensive history notes on each player, set, and production details when known. This allowed him to become a noted authority and early pioneer in the field of sports memorabilia research.
Starting in the 1960s, Umbricht began to share elements of his immense collection with the broader hobby by loaning prized cards to major card shows, exhibitions at ballparks, and the new sports card collecting magazines that gained popularity. He became one of the most respected and notable collectors in the industry, routinely consulted by dealers, auction houses, and fellow fans. His collection helped reshape what was known and understood about early baseball cards, and he is still considered today as one of the most impactful collector-historians of the 20th century.
Tragically, in 1978 at the age of 48, Jim Umbricht suddenly passed away from a heart attack. At the time of his death, his collection was considered priceless and unsurpassed. His widow decided the only responsible path was to auction the full Umbricht Collection through Sotheby’s to ensure it remained intact and available for researchers, institutions, and knowledgeable collectors to appreciate. In 1980, Sotheby’s conducted the landmark Umbricht Collection auction in New York City, dispersing over 4,500 cards to the highest bidders in what was then the highest grossing collectibles auction in history.
Today, pieces of the famed Umbricht Collection remain scattered amongst dedicated baseball card historians, archives, and private collections around the world. His unparalleled contributions to the research, definition, and study of early baseball cards remain his most significant and long-lasting legacy. Jim Umbricht can rightly be called the founding father of organized baseball card collecting and set the gold standard for comprehensive study that future generations have aspired towards. He left an indelible mark and helped ensure that many of the rarest and most endangered cards from baseball’s earliest eras would be preserved for posterity.
