This 12-card strip may be a cut from an uncut sheet of American Caramel (E91) cards. Since this group of 12 cards includes Athletics, New York, and Chicago it re-
presents the 1st series which was issued in 1908-09. Each of the 3 series (issued 1908-1909-1910) in the E91 set comprises of 33 subjects.
The American Caramel printers most likely employed a printing press with a 19-inch track width, which was a standard press (1908-1919) for lithographic printing
of multi-color, small-image jobs. My research shows a similar 19-inch printing press was employed by American Lithographic to print the T205, T206, T209, T210,
T211, T213, T214, and T215 cards.
v................................................. .................................... 19" wide .................................................. ...................................v
I would guess that the fundamental sheet arrangement was 12 by N-number of rows with one (or 2, or 3) multi-prints on each of the rows of cards.
In my opinion this 12-card strip is a great find....in that is provides us insight into a baseline of how the sheets were formatted in the printing process. Not only the
Candy cards of that era, but also the Tobacco cards of that era.
Questions, inputs, or whatever regarding this subject would be greatly appreciated......thanks.
TED Z
.