[brianp-beme]

As I mentioned in my previous posts, I have seen three different E220 National Caramel back variations--the two that Rhett has scanned for us, which are printed from the top of the card to bottom, and the other one that I mentioned, which is printed bottom to top.

After re-examining examples of the bottom to top printing variation (all variations fellow board member J.Hatch first pointed out to me years ago), I noted that it has the same printing layout as Rhett's second example, the one that the 'B' in the word 'Base' lines up under the second 's' in the word 'consists'.

Why is this of any relevance? I have two back variations of each of 18 cards. 14 of these pairs consist of Rhett's first top to bottom example (the one where the 'B' in the word 'Base' falls under the first 's' in the word 'consists') and the bottom to top variation I have mentioned (which lines up like Rhett's first example). The other four pairs have a combo of Rhett's back variation one and back variation two.

What can be deduced by this? Perhaps that the bottom to top back variation was not a separate printing by itself, because it appears that the same card does not exist as both top to bottom type 2 and bottom to top. Anyone out there feel free to prove me wrong. An educated guess would be that these two were from the same printing, but for some darn reason the backs on some of the cards were printed upside down on the sheets.

The type one back seems to be the most readily available...I have 118 different of the set (minus the Ruth and Cobb--hey, usually I blanch at the big bucks), and I can vouch that at least 99 are available with type one backs. I would venture to guess that all 120 are available (see list below for ones that it would be nice to verify as well) with this back, but perhaps only a portion are available elsewise.

How this helps out the dating of this issue I'm not sure...perhaps it is for more probing minds like Rhett's to extract the meaning of these observations and carry on with the filling in of the gaps of logic (I really stretched to make a few dental references).

Here is the list of players with unconfirmed type 1 backs--feel free to let us know here if you have any:

George Burns (Cleveland)
Ty Cobb
Frank Frisch
Hank Gowdy
Charles Grimm
Heinie Groh
Chas Hollocher
Rogers Hornsby
Walter Johnson
Pete Kilduff (leaping)
Carl Mays
Emil Muesel
V.J. Picinich
Eddie Rousch
Babe Ruth
George Sisler
Earl Smith
Frank Snyder (crouching)
Frank Snyder (standing)
Milton Stock (batting)
Fred C. Williams



Brian