Kashin R316 Short prints

[Baseball Bob]

Ok, as promised, here is the most up-to-date explanation of the enigmatic short print of the Kashin set. The combined graded (PSA + SGC) populations of the four "short prints" are as follows: Todt 24, Hadley 7, Seibold 12, Haines 10 (not counting "authentic" designations). I would add that in my seven years of collecting this set, I have seen perhaps two or three ungraded Haines and Hadley cards, five or six Seibold and numerous Todts. The Todt is no doubt much more common, and its POP actually exceeds ten other cards from the set. How could this be?
The traditional story of the SP evolution reads like this. The Kashin set was originally issued without a Ruth card, and then somehow the issuer "came to their senses" (as one enthusiast put it) and removed the four short prints, one from each box, and added a Ruth in each box. This was a simple story, but failed to explain why the Todt was so numerous compared to the other three SPs.
Recently, two early Kashin boxes have come to light that, along with the "final" or overwhelmingly most common box design, explain how this happened. I have attached a progressive illustration of these below. The SP cards were NOT one in each box! The Blue Box on the left is what I interpret to be the original issue box. The set contained Haines, Seibold and Todt, but no Hadley. It also contains a Ruth, but only in the Blue Box. A "transitional" box exists which clearly shows that the Todt and the Hadley were, for a short period, actually in the same (Coral) box! Thus the Todt, alone among the four, existed in both early boxes and thus should be expected to be higher POP. The Hadley is the scarcest short print, and this is because it was only issued for the short period of the "transitional" box.
There were also a small number of other players switched from box to box between the different versions. None of these resulted in a significant POP anomaly, however.
I apologize for the image quality, but the limitations of file size prevent clearer resolution. I'd be glad to email the .png file to anyone who wants it.

[leftygrove10]

I apologize for the image quality, but the limitations of file size prevent clearer resolution. I'd be glad to email the .png file to anyone who wants it.

That is very interesting. This is not one of the sets that I have attempted to collect yet, but could envision trying at some point. Could you please email me your picture to brad_green@cox.net? Thank you.

Brad

[DaveW]

Very interesting Eric! I’d never seen the early boxes but I thought one must exist. Could I get a copy of your picture too? I’ve almost finished the set.
Thanks,
Dave
dwsportsguy@gmail.com

[Casey2296]

Great information Eric, thanks for sharing your research. Any speculation as to why Ott & Hornsby seem relatively rare?

[Baseball Bob]

It may seem like the Ott is scarce, since it comes up for sale infrequently, but it's actually #5 in POP out of the whole set with 57 graded copies. The Hornsby checks in at #32 with 41 graded copies, which is pretty low among the HOFers in the set. Both come from the Canary Box, which has a significantly lower POP overall than the other three boxes. I have never been able to figure this out - it does not seem to correlate to how many HOFers were in the boxes or anything else obvious.

[Baseball Bob]

I made a few typos on the first version I posted. Sorry about that! Here is the corrected image.

[DaveW]

Great job finding the 3 different boxes, but I have to disagree with how you’ve ordered them. It seems like too much shuffling of cards for no reason. Here’s what I think makes more sense:

1) The original box was issued in 1929 with 100 players, 4 boxes of 25 with Babe
Ruth in the orange box.
2) Probably to increase sales of the other boxes, they decided to put Babe Ruth
in all 4 boxes. To do this, they removed the last card in each list (Haines from
the blue box, Todt from the coral box and Seibold from the canary box) and
added the phrase “A Babe Ruth Picture in every Box”. This is the box you call
the final box. These two boxes have the header:

469183
3) I think what you call the transitional box is really the final box. They changed the header to:
469184

So, they’ve decided to make the orange and coral boxes be all American League players and the blue and canary boxes be all National League players (except for Ruth of course who is still in each box). To do this, they need 48 American League cards, 48 National League cards and Ruth. But after removing Haines, Todt and Seibold they have 46 AL cards and 50 NL cards. So they added Todt (AL) back in and issued a new card of Hadley to get the 48 needed AL cards. They then removed Leach and Roush from the NL cards to get down to 48.

It should also be mentioned that Regan is counted as an AL card even though he is printed with Cinncinati NL. He never played for Cinncinati and was on Boston AL when the cards were issued ( so somebody mixed up Reds for Red Sox). He is in the orange box.

I think this accounts for why the changes were made. So the old story of why the short prints are there is mostly true. Haines, Todt and Seibold were removed for the Ruth card, but Hadley was only added at the end to get the last needed AL card. Todt was also added in at the end which explains why his cards are more plentiful than the other short prints.

- Dave

[oldeboo]

Awesome information and thanks for sharing. Without digging into it much beyond what has been shown, I agree that the "final" and "transitional" boxes might be swapped.
What was said above seems to make sense in regards to packaging design along with the explanation of additions and subtractions.

[Baseball Bob]

Dave -
I think you're probably right. Your explanation solves the age-old mystery of why the Todt "short print" is actually so plentiful (it actually has a graded POP higher than 13 other "regular issue" cards). The late addition may also explain the population of Hadley is so low; the lowest in the entire set.

Nice work!

Eric

[DaveW]

I would also say that the cards that have “Made in U.S.A.” on them are also short prints. The SGC pop reports only lists 6 of these out of 1600+ cards, but oddly two of those are the Todt and Hadley cards. So these cards must have been printed after the Hadley card was added to the set. It would be interesting to know if any exist of Haines or Seibold (only in the first set of boxes) or of Leach or Roush (removed from the set for the third set of boxes). If anybody has any of these, please let us know.

[rhettyeakley]

Great information guys! This is the stuff that really makes me appreciate the board, even though these types of threads don't get nearly the number of views as some of the more controversial threads. I really love people sharing this type of in-depth analysis.

The "Made in USA" Kashin cards were likely made for distribution in Canada, that is where the 5-10 that I have had came from. It seems like it was some sort of law in Canada to mark items not made in Canada to need to be marked as having been made in the USA. It is the reason you see a some 1920's baseball exhibit cards with their back stamped "Made in the USA". For years I bought those as being damaged by the sellers for having a "back stamp" and was happy to do so knowing their origin and that they were distributed that way. This continued into the 1960's and even later. There are some 1960's Donruss non-sports sets like Addams Family, Combat that also were distributed in Canada with a rubber stamped "Printed in the USA" as it needed to be mentioned and the cards didn't have that info printed on them.

[Baseball Bob]

I keep a pretty close eye on the cards passing through the market, and in the six years that I have avidly been collecting the set I have never seen either Roush or Leach with the overprint. Even if I didn’t buy the card I make a note of it on my spreadsheet.
Of course, the most mysterious set of all is the 5x7 premiums, which has at least 12 more cards than the regular issue, and no evidence of who printed them at all!

[DaveW]

Great info Eric! That would mean that the USA cards were printed from the final group of cards that included Todt and Hadley, but not Seibold, Haines, Leach or Roush. The cards with the movie theater backs were done in 1933. I think they were trying different things to sell these ( or just get rid of the remaining inventory). I don’t know much about the 5x7 cards but they must be related. I didn’t know that there were 12 extra subjects. Who were they? Is it known who was in that set? They certainly weren’t released in boxes. I wonder if the Canadian ones were in boxes of 25. If so, wouldn’t they have to have “Made in U.S.A.” on the box also?

[rhettyeakley]

Dave, if you look above the boxes shown all have “Made in USA” printed on them already so they likely didn’t need to change the box at all. It may have just been a case of the law in the USA just needing that info on the package where they came from while the Canadian law (or maybe even just preferred practice) was to have contents also indicating the same thing.

This is somewhat similar to American 20th Century Tobacco Cards requiring the Factory # on all inserts found within the package. At that time Canadian Tobacco cards (C-cards) & British Tobacco cards did not have this requirement and thus have no Factory #. It is always my first rule when teaching someone new to card collecting a quick and easy way to tell the country of origin of 20th Century Tobacco Cards… if there is a Factory # it is American.

[DaveW]

Thanks Rhett! You are right of course. It still seems odd that if the box says Made in U.S.A that each card must also say it.

[Baseball Bob]

The Premium set contains all 101 players from the standard size set, plus the following:
Benge
Bressler
Brickell
Cochrane
Dudley
Gilbert
Lind
McNeely
Metzler
Mitchell
Morgan
Myer

There may be others, but to my knowledge, this is it. They are truly beautiful portraits. Tim Newcombe is probably the most knowledgeable on this particular set. In my opinion, this set had to have been issued after the original. You might want to check out the article that I wrote for Old Cardboard magazine in 2016. I had input from several collectors of the R316 set and other than the incomplete origin story of the short prints, it is interesting background.

Cheers,
Eric