Posted By:
Bob LemkeIt is obvious that the Mothers’ Bread cards which originated in New Orelans in the mid-1910s are a parallel or partial parallel of another issue, but which one?
Listed in the American Card Catalog as D303, the set shares the basic 1-1/2” x 2-3/4” format and front design with several contemporary issues. We listed the set for the first time in the 2002 edition Standard Catalog, and checklisted it as paralleling the General Baking Co. (parent of Mothers’) set of 1914, with which it shares the D303 designation.
The checklist for both sets is presented as basically the same as the 1915 American Caramel issue, E106, with a few variations added to the bakery issues.
New evidence reported by Andy Baran, however, calls for rethinking these presumptions. Baran reports the existence in the collection of a California hobbyist of a Mothers’ Bread card of Happy Felsch (the pose is actually that of Ray Demmitt from E106). Since Black Sox Felsch does not appear in E106, and did not debut in the major leagues until 1915, Baran surmises that Mothers’ Bread, and by extension, General Baking’s D303 are not a parallel of E106 and are a 1916, rather than a 1914 issue.
Baran speculates that D303 may be a parallel of the 1916 Tango Eggs set of 20.
My question for you is . . . can you verify the existence of any D303 cards which do not appear in Tango Eggs?