Question on e120 / w573 / e121 cards with the "Kings Theatre" back
 

Hoping for some input from the board experts that have come across these in the past. So I have three of these pictured here. My question is, is the King's advertisement back original to the card itself or were the backs somehow applied later after the cards were printed?

If you look closely at the three scans, you'll se the cards have a lot of flaws on the front, such as tears, that don't show up on the backs. Plus, the card stock seems to be different altogether - if you look at the card on the right in the scan of the backs, you'll see that a piece of the back in the upper left corner has chipped away, exposing a very thin layer of the card (the front of the card) that is an entirely different paper stock altogether.

So is this just how these are or what's the story behind these? Thanks in advance for any thoughts you all have!

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I think someone used some tickets to reinforce (or reback) their cards. The cards have all been trimmed significantly from the original size the ticket would have had to be. The fact that different sets have that same back also leads one to think a kid this on their own. Also, that crease on that E120 is so much worse on the E120 than the smaller crease is on the ticket backing.

It could have been a simple preference for thicker card stock or possibly to help them with their game of “shooter” (one would pitch their cards against a wall in a pseudo-gambling game played by kids).

Hey Rhett, thanks for the response!

I'd also add here that the front of this "card" is a very thin layer. So, if we're saying that whoever did this took normally printed e120s/e121s and pasted these tickets onto the back, they would have also had to skin the actual e120s/e121s first before applying the backs. So these would more or less be a man-made "frankensteined type of" card from the same period, correct?

I'd agree that the flaws on the front are so much more significant than those same flaws are on the backs of the card - if they're present at all. The e121 on the left has tears that are somehow on the front only and completely absent from the card's reverse.

Does anyone else have any King's ad-backed e120s or e121s? I know they've been mentioned before on the board so it seems like these have been seen before now...

I don't have any but pretty sure I have seen one on an E121...(or w575...)