Whew! This one took some doing - a lot of effort and a ton of patience that I normally don't possess in my collecting endeavors. Aaaaand maybe about 10 years. Aaaaaand, maybe I gave up 2-3 times before now.... But it's done finally. I've completed some difficult projects - e103 complete set, 09 Obak complete set, e98 Master set of Commons, t204 set of commons... and I think I can honestly say that this was the most difficult out of any of them by far. There's really about 6-8 cards in the set that are insanely difficult, such as some of those Sacramento players. And there's another 2-4 that only seem to come around once every decade and you end up having to buy a complete set just to get the final couple that you need (which, sadly, is exactly what I did.) Hey, anybody need any d311s? I've got dupes!
This set really, really does NOT get enough love from collectors. It may be because it's a minor league set or it could be because the cards really are not readily available, but if bright, colorful and unique poses are what you look for in a card, this is really the set for you!
Below are a few scans. I've had some people ask me about oddities from this set and yes, they exist but they're exceedingly scarce as I've really only seen 3 oddities TOTAL. I think the set is pretty "clean" from a printing standpoint as they're very few errors in this or the d310 set. Mark Macrae always used to tell me about the "bluegrass" variations (cards missing the green color pass so the normally green grass appears blue) that you might see once a decade. Myself, I've only seen two. I also have a Danzig with an interesting Overprint on the back. Scans of the Overprint as well as a bluegrass Van Buren are below.
One interesting aspect about the set that it has in common with the 1909 Obak set is the large number of handcut cards the set has. I'd say 40-50% of the total 09 Obaks I've seen have been handcut and are easily identified by their "Frameless" backs. There aren't nearly that many handcut examples from the d311 set, but you do see some with some real "hack-job" type cuts. Occasionally you'll even see one that has oversized borders. I have a couple like that and included a scan of one of them, another Van Buren below.
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