1919-1921 W514 #71 Pickles Dillhoefer

Back in 2009, the first year of The Phillies Room, I decided to design a template to create original custom baseball cards.  My Chachi series of cards are entirely based on vintage Topps flagship set designs, and this was an exercise to create my own, non-Topps design.  For whatever reason, I landed on Pickles Dillhoefer as the subject for my first ever Chachi Originals card.  I posted the card, my Dad commented on the post (sarcastically) that Dillhoefer was his favorite ex-Phillie, and I added the elusive W514 card to my want list.  The Chachi Originals set must not have interested me that much as I produced a grand total of four cards using this custom template:  Dillhoefer, Pedro Martinez, former Phillies ballpark organist Paul Richardson and Harry Wolverton.  I still like the design, and maybe this is a project I'll revisit some day.

But back to Pickles. 

Dillhoefer was a catcher who played for parts of five seasons between 1917 and 1921 with the Cubs, Phillies and Cardinals.  The bulk of his career was spent with the Cardinals, where as a backup catcher for three seasons he hit .245 over 197 games.  Dillhoefer appeared in only 8 games for the 1918 Phillies, hitting .091 (1 for 11) as a catcher and pinch-hitter.  His sole Phillies hit came on May 18, 1918 in the ninth inning of an eventual 7-1 loss to the Cubs, off pitcher Claude Hendrix.

The W514 strip card is the only baseball card to ever feature Dillhoefer and back in 2009 I wrote that it would one day be mine.  11 years later, this past weekend, I saw the card for the first time ever at the Philadelphia Sportscard & Memorabilia Show.  In fact, I saw six versions of this card from the dealer I bought the card from as he had a whole binder of these strip cards.  I spent a while studying each of the Dillhoefer cards available for sale, eventually picking the one I thought was in the best shape.  I didn't pay a ridiculous price for the card either, which makes it even better, as I probably would have paid at least twice what the dealer was asking given I had never once seen the card in my 11 years of looking.

Cross another white whale off this collector's list!