Well, not that it's important, Joe was an outfielder who played 13 seasons with Cleveland, St. Louis, Boston, Brooklyn and Washington. He was a solid hitter with a lifetime batting average of .307. His best season was probably 1935, when he hit .348 for Cleveland, with 47 doubles, 20 triples, 10 homers and 110 RBI, finishing third in the MVP voting. A solid season, unfortunately overshadowed by Hank Greenberg and Wes Ferrell.
But that's not the reason for this page.
Centering is the reason for this page.
See, Joe Vosmik appears as card number 247 and 271 in the 1938 Goudey set.
Centering, in general, is not a tremendous problem with this set. Cards can be found off-center left to right, and occasionally top to bottom. But the cards are very rarely tilted.
Except, of course, card #271 - Joe Vosmik.
Joe's card #247 is pretty okay. Here's an example from my set:
As you can see, he's in pretty good shape (despite the tough corners). Nothing super-special about the population available in this card, either, as the #247 Vosmik is one of the more readily available cards in the set, as far as 38 Goudeys go.
But the #271 Vosmik is an entirely different story. Example:
Here's the PSA 6 that I used to own. Up until recently, this was the nicest Vosmik I'd ever seen. You'll notice it has a pronounced tilt, higher on the left than the right.
I now have a new Vosmik, that I purchased from a friend. It's a PSA 7, and while it has a funky upper-right corner (can't tell if it's paper loss or freaky toning), it's even better-centered and has less of a tilt. While the card surface and toning isn't as nice as my 6 used to be, I couldn't pass it up due to the lack of a tilt (that I will explain further below).
Here's a PSA 7 that I recently lost on eBay. Same tilt, left-to right.
Ugh! Here's a PSA 3 that I owned. Same top-to-bottom tilt, and also an overpronounced L-R tilt.
And here's a raw one, recently sold on eBay.
Every Vosmik I've ever seen has this same tilt.
As things would have it, the #271 Joe Vosmik is also the lowest pop card in the set.
Why? The cards surrounding it on the sheet are certainly not a problem, centering-wise. Was it a case of a bad paste-up job by some overeager artist at the Goudey Gum Company? Does anybody have a picture of a series two uncut sheet that they can share?
Does anybody have a well-centered Joe Vosmik that they'd like to sell?