W553 Checklist or is it Leader Novelty?

[iggyman]

As many of you know, a few years back I purchased a scrapbook on eBay that had three W553 uncut strips. The cards were as follows:

STRIP #001: Fritch, Goslin, O'Doul, Simmons
STRIP #002: Cochrane, Grove, Grimes, Hornsby
STRIP #003: Gehrig, Ruth

Picture2 1657.jpg
W553RuthGehrig.jpg

If I could give a very brief history lesson for the newbies in the audience; W553's came in uncut strips of 'FIVE" cards or as recent evidence indicates they also came in individual cards packaged with gum.

http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/...2009/1535.html

All over the internet is the assumed W553 checklist:

# 1 Lu Blue - 1929 (W553)
# 2 Mickey Cochrane - 1929 (W553)
# 3 Jimmie Foxx - 1929 (W553)
# 4 Frankie Frisch - 1929 (W553)
# 5 Lou Gehrig - 1929 (W553)
# 6 Goose Goslin - 1929 (W553)
# 7 Burleigh Grimes - 1929 (W553)
# 8 Lefty Grove - 1929 (W553)
# 9 Rogers Hornsby - 1929 (W553)
# 10 Rabbit Maranville - 1929 (W553)
# 11 Bing Miller - 1929 (W553)
# 12 Lefty O'Doul - 1929 (W553)
# 13 Babe Ruth - 1929 (W553)
# 14 Al Simmons - 1929 (W553)
# 15 Pie Traynor - 1929 (W553)

My strip had ten of the cards in the checklist. The missing cards were:

Lu Blue
Jimmy Foxx
Rabbit Maranville
Bing Miller,
Traynor.

I've always wondered why the scrapbook I purchased only had ten cards? The bottom card of each four card strip had been cut and discarded and the bottom and perhaps top cards of the Gehrig/Ruth strip had also been discarded. My assumption has always been that the discarded cards were in all probability duplicates. The scrapbook had plenty of baseball newspaper articles plus a few 1933 Goudey cards pasted through-out but no other W553's.

After searching the far reaches of the internet and talking to a handful of advanced collectors. I'm convinced that the five missing W553 cards do not exist. In fact, I believe the five missing cards which do not belong on the checklist were actually Leader Novelty cards that were mislabeled. You can see some similarities (these are not my cards):

leadnovmaranville.jpg


I realize my theory has a generous amount of speculation, and perhaps a large cache of W553's is sitting in a barn right now waiting to be discovered, but after endlessly chasing those five missing cards I'm throwing down the gauntlet. Can anybody in this circle of collectors prove me wrong (or right)???

Lovely Day...

[shammus]

I THINK I remember one collector who owned a Foxx that I've chatted with at length about this set before. I'll let him come forward though if he notices this thread....

[Leon]

Nice analysis Iggy. As a type collector I haven't kept up with the known players in W553. In Burdick's last ACC which he updated (1960), he mentions 10 were seen. In the 2011 SCD I see 15 listed as W553 but in the new 2012 shortened edition, I don't see them listed at all? I would be curious how/when Bob added the other 5 cards? I only have Ruth in W553 but have these below in Leader Theater....I will try to search my hobby library for more answers. BTW, you really should have put "T206" and "autograph" in the title of this thread so more people would look at it .

[brianp-beme]

Iggy, and all...what is the official checklist for the Leader Novelty cards? Are all five of the 'questionable existence' W553's (Blue, Foxx, Maranville, Miller and Traynor) available as Leader cards? The Maranville and Traynor Leader cards have been shown on this thread, but how about the other three?

By the way, I am the guy that ended up with the Leader Root card (I checked back on a previous Leader thread started by Iggy).

Brian

[iggyman]

Brian,

I'm not sure a definitive Leader Novelty checklist exist. According to Frank Ward's website..................." there was said to be 33 (Leader Novelty) cards in the Copeland group, but only 20 different have been cataloged to date". As per Frank Ward's own words the auction that he referenced is a 1991 Sotheby's Copeland Collection Auction (lot #707).

Of the "five" W553 cards that I am currently questioning the existence off. I have seen Leader Novelty cards of Jimmy Foxx, Bing Miller, and obviously the Maranville and Traynor pictured in this thread. I have not seen a Leader Novelty Lu Blue.

Glad to see the Leader Novelty Root card found a good home. I always wondered where it ended-up. I remember having a snipe on it, but my sonar was really focus on picking-up the hall of famers. I don't know if we will ever see Leader Novelty cards on eBay again, but just in case I already have my snipe ready.

Lovely Day...

[iggyman]

Leon,

Thank you for the input, that is interesting........so Burdick had the checklist at ten. Smart guy, I think he knew a thing or two about this hobby of ours. I've been reading past Net54 threads (slow day here at the Richie Rich mansion), if you read this old thread: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...highlight=w553 . An interesting observation by Brett Domue don't you think............he actually questions whether the W553 checklist should be updated and some cards moved to the Leader Novelty checklist. I wonder where I got my idea. By the way, I know it's Friday and Net54ers are getting ready to hit the disco, but I'm going to keep bumping this thread until I see a W553 Jimmy Foxx.

By the way, I'm always amazed by that miscut Joe Judge card. So were they horizontal or vertical? The world will never know......

Lovely Day...

Originally Posted by Leon

Nice analysis Iggy. As a type collector I haven't kept up with the known players in W553. In Burdick's last ACC which he updated (1960), he mentions 10 were seen. In the 2011 SCD I see 15 listed as W553 but in the new 2012 shortened edition, I don't see them listed at all? I would be curious how/when Bob added the other 5 cards? I only have Ruth in W553 but have these below in Leader Theater....I will try to search my hobby library for more answers. BTW, you really should have put "T206" and "autograph" in the title of this thread so more people would look at it .

[leftygrove10]

I got my Leader Novelty Grove card from Bob Bostoff back in the late 1990's (I believe). He had a whole bunch of them for sale in the SCD at that time. He didn't have them labeled as Leader Novelty. They were labeled as "Small R316 cards", or something like that. I believe Bob's business name was Empire Sports. If any of you have some SCD magazine's sitting around from the late 1990's, you could probably cross reference his "sale list" to the checklist of Leader Novelty cards.

Here is my Grove Leader Novelty card.... Shown next to one of my W553 Grove cards...

[mike_v]

Hi all, I've been trying to learn more about some W553s that I inherited. Glad I stumbled across this thread.

FWIW, my collection has 16 cards (from a blue strip and a white strip), and the inventory is consistent with Iggy's theory that Blue/Foxx/Maranville/Miller/Traynor W553s don't exist.

I've scanned the cards and also made a group scan arranged vertically in the same order as Iggy's strips:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...8J8HD&lb=1&s=O
The blank row near the bottom is for the missing Gehrigs-- maybe my Grandpa stuck them in his bicycle tires? or hated the Yankees??

Iggy, I'm one of the newbies in the audience, so could you continue the history lesson and explain why it's commonly accepted that W553s came in strips of *five*, as opposed to strips of *ten* that might have been more commonly/conveniently distributed after being cut into two strips of 5 (or 4)?

Clearly, your strips of 4 don't jibe with the strip-of-5 story. Also, if you look at my "reconstructed strips" scan, the way the torn cards match up like a jigsaw puzzle makes me think that these may have originally been a strip of 10:
* The tops of the Frisches and bottom of the Ruth are the only cards that look machine-cut. (Bottom of white-Frisch and top of Hornsby are straight, but maybe they were trimmed after being torn since you can see the cut lines?)
* The tear-matches between Simmons-and-Cochrane and Cochrane-and-Grove especially make it seem that these weren't just strips of 5 (or 4). Granted, with the missing Gehrigs and trimmed Hornsby, it's far from clear that these were strips of ten. But hopefully there are some clues in here to add to the existing collective knowledge about these cards.

Iggy, how do your strips match up as a strip of 10? I could be fooling myself, but looks like the top of the Frisch and bottom of Ruth are straight, while the other edges are slightly diagonal and might match up?

Cheers,
Mike

PS, Individual cards can be seen in the gallery:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2264&k=NJ8J8HD

[ScottFandango]

Originally Posted by mike_v

Hi all, I've been trying to learn more about some W553s that I inherited. Glad I stumbled across this thread.

Originally Posted by mike_v

FWIW, my collection has 16 cards (from a blue strip and a white strip), and the inventory is consistent with Iggy's theory that Blue/Foxx/Maranville/Miller/Traynor W553s don't exist.

I've scanned the cards and also made a group scan arranged vertically in the same order as Iggy's strips:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...8J8HD&lb=1&s=O
The blank row near the bottom is for the missing Gehrigs-- maybe my Grandpa stuck them in his bicycle tires? or hated the Yankees??

Iggy, I'm one of the newbies in the audience, so could you continue the history lesson and explain why it's commonly accepted that W553s came in strips of *five*, as opposed to strips of *ten* that might have been more commonly/conveniently distributed after being cut into two strips of 5 (or 4)?

Clearly, your strips of 4 don't jibe with the strip-of-5 story. Also, if you look at my "reconstructed strips" scan, the way the torn cards match up like a jigsaw puzzle makes me think that these may have originally been a strip of 10:
* The tops of the Frisches and bottom of the Ruth are the only cards that look machine-cut. (Bottom of white-Frisch and top of Hornsby are straight, but maybe they were trimmed after being torn since you can see the cut lines?)
* The tear-matches between Simmons-and-Cochrane and Cochrane-and-Grove especially make it seem that these weren't just strips of 5 (or 4). Granted, with the missing Gehrigs and trimmed Hornsby, it's far from clear that these were strips of ten. But hopefully there are some clues in here to add to the existing collective knowledge about these cards.

Iggy, how do your strips match up as a strip of 10? I could be fooling myself, but looks like the top of the Frisch and bottom of Ruth are straight, while the other edges are slightly diagonal and might match up?

Cheers,
Mike

PS, Individual cards can be seen in the gallery:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2264&k=NJ8J8HD

this was destiny for you....especially since this thread is only a few days old

[iggyman]

Breaking News!..........................W553's were not distributed in "5" card strips!...................W553's are actually "10" card strips!.................more to come!

ticker tape.jpg

Mike,

Talking on behalf of all W553 aficionado's, I'm sure glad you brought this thread back from the dead. Thanks for the great pics and detective work. You've helped unravel a part of the W553 puzzle. My understanding and the hobby's, in regards to W553 being distributed as five card strips is due to the simple fact that at least a few (4 or 5) five card strips exist (or existed) in the prewar collecting world. To date, no ten card strip has ever surfaced (other then the ones I own, a few "4" card strips were last seen in the 1980's). I know of the existence of one "5" card B&W strip with the following cards from top to bottom (the owner is not a baseball card collector, but promises to send me a pic of the strip in the near future):

Grove, Grimes, Hornsby, Gehrig, Ruth.

I would expect the above mentioned strip to have the Ruth card at the bottom (with a nice machine cut on the bottom border), while the Grove would be at the top (with perhaps a ragged hand-cut top border). From our small sample we can start to see a pattern in the order they were printed (with this obscure set, you take your victories wherever you can get them). From top-to-bottom here is how they were printed:

Fritch, Goslin, O'Doul, Simmons, Cochrane, Grove, Grimes, Hornsby, Gehrig, and Ruth at the bottom.

For confirmation of the "10" card strip theory and the order in which they were printed, we can use Mike's (cut) sample. You can clearly see that most of the cut cards line-up. For further proof, we can use another strip of cards which was right in front of my nose. I feel like a dummy for not seeing this before, but the ten card strip of W553's that came out of a scrapbook also line up.

Here is a pic of strip one (with Fritch, Goslin, O'Doul, Simmons) followed by strip two (Cochrane, Grove, Grimes, Hornsby):

Strip #002.jpg


A pic of strip two (Cochrane, Grove, Grimes, Hornsby) followed by strip three (Gehrig, Ruth):

Strip #001.jpg

A pic of the bottom of strip three (Gehrig, Ruth) displays a nice even machine cut (front and back). Strip #001 with Fritch at the top, also displays a nice even machine cut (sorry, not pictured)):

Picture2 1671.jpg
Picture2 1670.jpg

Do we all agree on the cut pattern ? More then ever, I am 98.5% convince that the W553 set only has ten cards. A few leaps of faith would now be required to believe the set is only "15" cards. To the best of my knowledge, in this century, no W553 cards of Foxx, Grimes, Blue, Traynor, or Miller has surfaced. Not in VCP, nor eBay, nor any auction houses, nor in any online dealer inventory, nor on this board. Those "5" cards were added to the W553 checklist at almost the precise moment when Leader Novelty cards were gaining a little recognition within our small prewar baseball card universe. Those "5" cards were Leader Novelty cards which were wrongly classified as W553's by the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards!

This time I'm throwing down a bigger gauntlet!!!

Lovely Day...

[leftygrove10]

I think this is a huge discovery! Congratulations, guys! Great detective work!

[mike_v]

I love a good mystery...

To extend Iggy's gauntlet, if this 10-card-strip theory is correct, then it follows that there should be *no* copies of the W553 Ruth that are hand-cut/torn on the *bottom* edge (since Ruth was the bottom card of this theoretical 10-card strip and hence always machine-cut). Likewise, there should be *no* copies of the FriSch card with hand-cut *top* edges. Has anyone ever seen anything to the contrary? The existence of a bottom-torn Ruth could indirectly imply the existence of an 11th card (and a 15-card set is back in the realm of possibilities).


Also, a couple of pages I came across that are consistent with there being only 10 W553s. (Sorry if these are old news-- but this is all new to me)

Here's an auction from Aug 2010 for a "partial set" of 10 W553s-- can you guess which 5 are missing from the set?
http://www.legendaryauctions.com/Lot...x?lotid=110965

And this site has prices (based on previous sales?) for precisely the 10 cards we're talking about (and a blank for the other 5-- none ever sold?):
http://www.vintagecardprices.com/set...lue-Prices.htm

Mike

[mike_v]

Whoa! I was searching for W553 Ruths to test the theory I just posted about (torn bottom edges) and came across the following copy from Leon Luckey's site:
http://luckeycards.com/pw553ruth4.jpg
The back of the card didn't seem odd to me at first, but then I noticed the pencil writing. First thought was: "What a coincidence, some kid wrote the player's name on the back along with a random number that must refer to a checklist from some other set. That's just like what my grandpa did on all of his W553s."

Then I took another look at my grandpa's blue Ruth W553:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2279&k=Nf5N2pK
and realized:
HOLY #*%&-- LEON LUCKEY HAS THE WHITE W553 RUTH THAT USED TO BELONG TO MY GRANDPA!!!
What a ridiculously small world-- Leon even posted on this thread a few days ago!
I can't believe that. I wonder if the missing blue Hornsby and both Gehrigs are also out there somewhere with their names penciled in on the back... .

[iggyman]

Mike,

A ten card strip is already an awfully long baseball card to give to a kid, I can't imagine a fifteen card strip existing. If we are going in the direction of hypotheticals; another "10" card strip could exist with the "5" cards in question and either non-sports cards included to round-out the strip, or "5" other baseball cards of that era were also printed..........which would make the W553 set at least a twenty card set; but I'm not ready to drink that kool-aid.

I sure wish Frank Ward would chime in with his experiences (on the W553 and Leader Novelty cards).

Lovely Day...

[iggyman]

I'm sure Leon will get a kick out of your grandfathers connection!

Mike, did your grandfather live in the Philadelphia area??? Was he anywhere near this address: "3411 N. 2nd St., Phila., PA" in circa 1930 ?

Lovely Day...

[Leon]

Originally Posted by mike_v

Whoa! I was searching for W553 Ruths to test the theory I just posted about (torn bottom edges) and came across the following copy from Leon Luckey's site:
http://luckeycards.com/pw553ruth4.jpg
The back of the card didn't seem odd to me at first, but then I noticed the pencil writing. First thought was: "What a coincidence, some kid wrote the player's name on the back along with a random number that must refer to a checklist from some other set. That's just like what my grandpa did on all of his W553s."

Then I took another look at my grandpa's blue Ruth W553:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2279&k=Nf5N2pK
and realized:
HOLY #*%&-- LEON LUCKEY HAS THE WHITE W553 RUTH THAT USED TO BELONG TO MY GRANDPA!!!
What a ridiculously small world-- Leon even posted on this thread a few days ago!
I can't believe that. I wonder if the missing blue Hornsby and both Gehrigs are also out there somewhere with their names penciled in on the back... .

Very cool Mike. Sometimes I will erase marks and other times I don't. I won't usually erase them when there is potential for some more info being gleaned from the marks. I have a few other cards that have historical type writing too. On this Ruth I just never cracked it to to erase the marks. If we can find a suitable replacement, and you are going to collect the cards, I wouldn't mind trading my Ruth to you in order to get it back into your (grandfather's) collection. best regards

[iggyman]

First of all, let me apologize to Peter for constantly updating a non T206 thread (sorry Peter ). Hopefully, he won't get too upset. Okay, back to the task at hand; now that we know the order of the "ten known" cards in the W553 set, we can start to play all sorts of games.

For instance, if you took the graded W553 set that sold in the Legendary August 2010 auction and lined them up...

W553 Complete.jpg

Well, looky here, it sure hints at the fact that they all were originally in the same ten card strip. If no objections are heard from the four or five students still in the class, I'm going to count these cards as a third confirmation of the ten card strip theory. Regrettably or not, the dealer who won the cards discarded sold them on eBay for some green paper (I know a silly trade). Thus, a complete ten card "cut" strip which was probably original owner, is now scattered across the known prewar card universe. Does anybody volunteer a couple dozen or so years of their lives to put them together again?

Lovely Day...

[mike_v]

Iggy, I was actually looking at the same thing. I'm not sure this red set should be counted as confirmation, though. This set looks off-center (shifted to the right). If you look at the left margin of the top five cards, they look pretty consistent, but the left margin of the bottom five looks quite different (wider). That makes me think these 10 cards were *not* once a single strip. Thoughts?

Also, I'm not sure that the top-to-bottom cut matching is as clear as it is on our 3 sets. Looks like these have been trimmed down. But I suppose there aren't any large-bottom-margin to large-top-margin pairings, which is something.

[mike_v]

Leon, it certainly would be nice to reunite that collection. Even more if I could find the missing Gehrigs and Hornsby (probably not too likely!?). But for now, please just let me know if you ever get a hankering to do anything with that card, and in the meantime I'll educate myself a bit more and continue to sort through the rest of the collection to see where I'd like to go from here. Will be in touch. Thanks.

BTW Iggy- Right era, but my grandfather was a St Louis guy. Is that address near and dear to you? I'm not too far away...

[glchen]

BTW, looks like that I own the W553 Gehrig from the Legendary auction. I was not the originally winner of that lot however, and don't know where the other cards are.

[iggyman]

Mike,

The first five cards from the Legendary auction (Fritch, Goslin, O'Doul, Simmons, and Cochrane) have a little bit of a blank right border and line-up really nicely. While the next five (Grove, Grimes, Hornsby, Gehrig, and Ruth) are cut right on the edge of the right border with no blank cardboard space. At first glanced, I assumed a slight angle cut but now I'm not so sure. These cards obviously saw a blade before the cross country trip to SGC, which makes it tough to tell.

3411 N. 2nd St., Phila., PA was the address of Bubble Gum Novelties (Marble Gum). Evidence indicates that the W553 set, containing sports and non-sports cards, was perhaps printed at that address and packaged with gum. That is, the w553 set is actually one of the first (actually second) baseball cards issued with gum (Colgan chips a round baseball player portrait disc about the size of a silver dollar was distributed with gum in 1909). One day I will start a Net54 poll to determine whether the Colgan chips are actually baseball cards?????

[iggyman]

Gary, I really like the red W553 Gehrig. You can see the cut line on the top border where someone made a real nice cut. The bottom border was obviously left alone and probably exhibits the original cut from a circa 1930's kid. Nice card!

Lovely Day...

[iggyman]

This uncut W553 five card strip is new to the hobby. It's been sitting in a desk drawer for a long time and still resides there. The order of the strip is as expected, the only monkey wrench is the cut. The top and bottom borders appear to be machine cut as opposed to hand cut.

5 card w-553 strip.jpg

Robert Groves-top card.jpg

Thus, the latest - latest - latest "most recent" new theory is that these puppies were definitely sold/distributed/smuggled out of the factory in "FIVE" and "TEN" card strips, while the W553 film star version was definitely distributed individually and with gum . I believe Frank Ward called the "5" and "10" card strip theory about six years ago. You were right Frank. As you were.

Not my card but for comparison sake, here is one of the W553 film star cards.

w553 montgomery.jpg

Lovely Day...

[camlov2]

Here are some pictures showing that these were produced in a 10 cards strip, sorry that the images are not better.

[brianp-beme]

You would think this thread would bring Iggy out of hiding...for the good of all mankind come back Iggy!

Brian