Scott,
Tim says exactly what I’ve been saying perhaps better. It’s all about timing and availability.
Look at the timeline that Ted is saying.
If those 12 players above were first to be printed with any of the three brands Piedmont, Sweet Caporal or Sovereign you would see more of Wagner & Plank with potentially all three brands but at the very least more of them with Sweet Caporal. They wouldn’t be missing and so absent.
Generally your first production is one of your bigger productions as it’s your launch, then subsequent productions could be bigger or smaller depending demand and sell thru. Since we can narrow down Plank and Wagner to only factory dist cards with the Sweet Caporal brand let’s focus on that for now.
If they did run as Ted says Plank and Wagner in the first 12 then for whatever reason Wagner was pulled effecting Plank how did it not affect the other 10 above with Sweet Caporal to some degree as well? The fact is it didn’t those other 12 are even found with the other brands.
If Plank was affected by the pull of Wagner and there was a cease & deist etc. from Plank to the ATC how come he shows up in the 350 series? I have even done some numbers of my own since mid 1999 about 50 individual Planks have come to sale or been publicly offered of which only about 12 or so have been 150 series cards. Showing roughly at glance that perhaps the 150’s are scarcer of Plank which has been the idea with many collectors for some time. This would suggest IMO that Plank was added towards the tail end of the 150 runs and carried over into the 350 before going away for whatever reason. If Plank was run in the spring of 1909 as Ted says then not pulled till 1910 that’s one long legal battle to have your card pulled or be affected by Wagner your sheet mate.
None of us are going to have the exact answer but saying Wagner & Plank were among the first 12 cards ever printed and looking at their numbers today compared with other 150 series cards just doesn’t add up IMO.
In regards to advertising in advance yes that does happen Scott but not so much with consumables maybe with the Wii or new iPhone but on household cleaners and smokes…not as much IMO.
In the end I wish Ted was right then we all could afford to get a nice Wagner & Plank as they would have printed quite a few of them in that very first flick of the switch at the factory before yanking them for whatever historical reason.
John
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