Uncatalogued Standard Biscuit Hall of Famer

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Posted By: Paul

I hope there are some experts out there on the 1916-17 Standard Biscuit cards. These are the cards with the same design as the M-101-4 and M-101-5 cards issued by the Sporting News and many other companies. According to the Standard Catalog, they share the same checklist as M-101-4 and M-101-5.

However, this isn't entirely true. I have a Standard Biscuit card of Bobby Wallace, card number 186. (I hope the scan shows up, because I've never posted a scan before). The Standard Catalog lists number 186 as Buck Weaver in M-101-4 and Zach Wheat in M-101-5. Bobby Wallace is not listed at all.

I've contacted Bob Lemke and he is looking into this (along with what he described as other anomolies in these sets) but he has no answer yet. I have a few thoughts, but not clear answers.

* I suppose it's possible that the Standard Biscuit cards don't really share a checklist with M-101-4/5. But this seems unlikely because every other Standard Biscuit card that I've seen advertised matches M-101-4/5.

* Wallace may have been substituted in or out of the set by Standard Biscuit, the Sporting News, and most or all of the rest of the issuers, but no one noticed until now. This seems unlikely because if a Hall of Fame card was in so many related sets, someone would have noticed.

* Wallace may have been substituted in or out of the set by Standard Biscuit alone. This seems unlikely too. Standard Biscuit must have gotten its photos from the same source as everyone else, and it seems real unlikely that they would have searched for a photo of Wallace and converted it into a card in place of Wheat or Weaver.

* Maybe the supplier of the photos sent a few extra photos (maybe 201 or 210 for a set of 200) and each issuer selected its favorite 200. Again, this seems unlikely because there should be more variations out there when comparing one issuer to another.

Any ideas?