1908 Detroit Free Press trimmed?

[orly57]

This 1908 Detroit Free Press Ty Cobb is probably one of my 3 favorite cards. This card has sat in both a psa and sgc authentic holder during its 109 years on this earth (currently PSA) and is one of only two known examples. Jeff Lichtmann owns the other (of course). It is pictured below next to mine so you can see the difference in the size of the bottom borders.I normally stay away from authentic cards, but when the pop is 2, you take it any way you can get it.
I thought it was odd that someone would trim this card, so I did some research and looked for images of other DFP cards. To my astonishment, I found several of them with equally short bottom borders. It can't be a coincidence! I though perhaps they were made to fit albums, but these are standard postcard size from top-to bottom when "untrimmed," so there would be no need to do that. Then I found the holy grail: this 8-card sheet clearly shows that the cards at the top have far shorter bottom borders than those at the bottom of the sheet. It appears they may have come like this from the factory.
You will note that Rossman is at the bottom of this sheet with a large bottom border, but I attached another Rossman I found with the short border. I thought perhaps that the cards don't always appear on the same spot on the sheets. I ran this theory by Kevin Struss, who is among the most respected minds in our hobby, and he is of the opinion that cards are always in the same spot on sheets, but that they may have been handcut at the factory this way. Psa lists these cards at 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 but vcp lists as 5 1/4 x 3 1/2. Very strange.
Anyway, I know most of you could care less about DFP, but it's an interesting issue I thought I would share with the board.

[orly57]

Here are the sheet and the other "short" cards I found:

[Bigshot69]

Awesome card, Orlando. The larger top margin on your copy would appear to further substantiate your hypothesis as well.

[orly57]

Wow. Great point Adam. Can't believe I hadn't noticed that. The top cards on the sheet do actually have larger top borders than the bottom cards on the sheet.

[insidethewrapper]

So are their 2 sheets of 8 making a complete set at 16 ? Old Cardboard has the most updated list and photos and they list 14 players and on your sheet I see listed ( Downs and Coughlin ) which were previously not listed therefore the set is now at least 16. These should be added on the Old Cardboard website. Nice find !!!

[BeanTown]

Old Cardboard and PSA even have different sizes for the cards. Were these hand collated? That would explain the Jumbo size Cobb we have seen and then the more normal size ones.

I won a group of Brush postcards and noticed all different sizes from oversized to smaller with no evidence of trimming whatsoever. They were commons to.

I can't see to many people cutting/trimming postcards back in the day to put in scrap books and I don't think the card doctors and trimmers from the 70s and 80s would want to work on them since they were not valuable and were considered a nitche.

Hopefully there are some postcards experts on here that might know how they were made at the factory.

[Baseball Rarities]

Here is a better scan of the uncut sheet. I do not remember where I stole the scan from, so sorry for not giving proper credit.

The top edge is definitely hand cut. The other three edges look to be fairly straight.

[insidethewrapper]

If someone with tech skills could load that McIntyre photo to the Old Cardboard Site it would be appreciated. They have the wrong photo on their now. Thanks

[orly57]

Here is a better scan of the uncut sheet. I do not remember where I stole the scan from, so sorry for not giving proper credit.

The top edge is definitely hand cut. The other three edges look to be fairly straight.

It appears to me that all of the top 4 cards would HAVE to be cut "short" at the bottom or else the top borders of the second-row cards would be way short. The bottom row has all that extra white bottom-border that you see on Jeff's Cobb. If Cobb was on the bottom row of his sheet, then that explains Jeff's but doesn't explain mine (or the "short" Rossman) since you (Kevin) say that all sheets have the same layout. Maybe they started hand-cutting the bottom row so they would be uniform?

[Baseball Rarities]

So are their 2 sheets of 8 making a complete set at 16 ? Old Cardboard has the most updated list and photos and they list 14 players and on your sheet I see listed ( Downs and Coughlin ) which were previously not listed therefore the set is now at least 16. These should be added on the Old Cardboard website. Nice find !!!

My gut tells me that the 8 card sheet that is posted above is only 1/2 of a 16 card sheet, which would contain a complete set. It looks to me like the original 16 card sheet (4 cards x 4 cards) was unevenly cut horizontally across the middle.

DFP postcards are extremely rare. I think that there is a good chance that they were never issued to the public and possibly all of the known cards were hand cut off sheets back in the day.

Has anyone ever seen a postmarked DFP postcard?

[orly57]

What a great point. In my research, I saw no DFP cards that appeared to be postally used. Not all online images showed the backs, but none of them had any signs of being postally used like a postmark. What does this mean then? I can see it's significant, but can't put my finger on why. And if they weren't distributed to the public, what was their purpose? I found this old Lew Lipsett auction where Jeff's Cobb sold many years ago. There were 11 total DFP cards auctioned off in four different lots. Lew did not provide pics of the backs. Here is a link. There was also a Rose Co Wagner sold for just over 5k...those were the days.
http://www.oldjudge.com/archive/200811/postcards/#205

[BeanTown]

Clues to solving the age old mystery. Last night in a Clean Sweep auction as a Crawford Detroit Free Press card sold for 5500.

https://www.cleansweepauctions.com/item.cgi?show_item=0000658865

Luckily they showed the back of the postcard which has a promotion stamped on it. I don't think anyone has ever seen this stamp before as they are normally blank backed. Plus as Kevin mentioned, we still have yet to see a postally used one from this series of 16.

So my guess is the Detroit Free Press did a print run to promote Sunday paper sales and then pulled the plug before they got in circulation. Most likely they were gonna be distributed to paperboys but just a guess. The sizes variance makes sense as Orlando said. I've seen the same size variances on the Brush PC series to.

Very cool item that sold last night and congrats to the new owner.

[Leon]

Great thread. Thanks (to all) for sharing the info.

Clues to solving the age old mystery. Last night in a Clean Sweep auction as a Crawford Detroit Free Press card sold for 5500.

https://www.cleansweepauctions.com/item.cgi?show_item=0000658865

Luckily they showed the back of the postcard which has a promotion stamped on it. I don't think anyone has ever seen this stamp before as they are normally blank backed. Plus as Kevin mentioned, we still have yet to see a postally used one from this series of 16.

So my guess is the Detroit Free Press did a print run to promote Sunday paper sales and then pulled the plug before they got in circulation. Most likely they were gonna be distributed to paperboys but just a guess. The sizes variance makes sense as Orlando said. I've seen the same size variances on the Brush PC series to.

Very cool item that sold last night and congrats to the new owner.

[Leon]

Great thread. Thanks (to all) for sharing the info.

Clues to solving the age old mystery. Last night in a Clean Sweep auction as a Crawford Detroit Free Press card sold for 5500.

https://www.cleansweepauctions.com/item.cgi?show_item=0000658865

Luckily they showed the back of the postcard which has a promotion stamped on it. I don't think anyone has ever seen this stamp before as they are normally blank backed. Plus as Kevin mentioned, we still have yet to see a postally used one from this series of 16.

So my guess is the Detroit Free Press did a print run to promote Sunday paper sales and then pulled the plug before they got in circulation. Most likely they were gonna be distributed to paperboys but just a guess. The sizes variance makes sense as Orlando said. I've seen the same size variances on the Brush PC series to.

Very cool item that sold last night and congrats to the new owner.

[Golfcollector]

I was an early pursuer of the Crawford but WAY above my budget is where this one landed. Very cool and very rare card!