1911 Baseball Snapshots Strip Card Ad Find

[jeffshep]

Just uncovered this ad from a February 1911 trade magazine. I'm not familiar with the issue so I'll leave it up to you Net54'ers to decipher. Enjoy!

[Zach Wheat]

Neat. I am not familiar with this set at all. They almost look like cropped portions of the images of other T and E sets.

Z Wheat

Nice add. Look like w555's.

http://www.oldcardboard.com/w/w555/w...?cardsetID=831

[WillowGrove]

I don't collect 555's but that is a really great ad. Thanks for posting.

[familytoad]

If only Grampa was a jobber.
If only Grampa was a jobber who was also a poor salesman.
If only Grampa was a jobber , poor salesman and a hoarder.
If only Grampa was a jobber, poor salesman, hoarder and left me the only key to his attic.

Of course, doing a little math here, It would have had to be my Great-Grampa who was the failed jobber from the descriptions above.

I'm a bit confused on how the small box can have 4 pictures each, looking at the photos in the ad. Still, if anyone has a actual scan of one of these boxes, from their collection...it would be cool to see! Very cool indeed!

[paul]

So it looks like W555s were available on two different kinds of boxes. I guess the big box in the ad held the little boxes.

[birdman42]

Hm. Interesting that the ad promises 250 different pictures. OC says that there are "69+" in the set. I can't imagine that less than a third of the set has been discovered yet after all these years, so my conclusion is that Meyer never got all the way through their planned run.

There's been plenty of speculation about the source of these images, mostly centered around E93/4/7/8; does the plan of a larger set change anyone's mind?

Brian, here's a link to a thread with a pic of a repro box. http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...highlight=W555
And this thread discusses some of the ins and outs of the set. http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...highlight=W555

Bill

[h2oya311]

Is this a new discovery that the W555 were issued through 1911? I know most TPGs have modified the date they use for this issue from 1907 to 1910. It looks like 1911 (or before) may be the new date.

I know the fairly recent discovery (and sale) of a complete box was the first known example. Previously, people did not know how the W555 were issued. This ad is significant in the dating of the issue to at least 1911.

Thanks for sharing!! Derek

[joeadcock]

Jeffshep

Cool ad......I have a piece of the small box somewhere. I will try and locate it.

[boneheadandrube]

That's an awesome W555 piece, well done!
GB

[ullmandds]

that is awesome...very cool! i believe the set is limited to the designs of e93/94/97/98...they may have had loftier goals for the set they never were able to realize.

[jeffshep]

Thanks for the comments everyone! So if that case contained 72 boxes at 4 cards a piece, that would equal 288 cards plus the 14 on the exterior box (maybe they were printed on the reverse as well?). 302 cards per case regardless, but so small, no wonder they're rarities. It's plausible that all 250 subjects existed at one time. Also, perhaps the ad being February of 1911 was meant to spawn future sales for the 1911 baseball season...and with the delay in publishing, this was probably put together around Christmas/Jan.1st of the new year, possibly earlier.

[deadballfreaK]

Ugh. My best friend's great grandpa ran a general store during the great card era. The store was apparently crammed with antique stuff and the sons just bulldozed it and burned it all to clear ground for farming maybe 20 years ago. The few items that remain just make me wonder what was lost.

[phlflyer1]

Wow,

Sorry to dig up an old post but I haven't been on the board too much until the past few weeks or so.

Thanks to the OP who posted the images of the W555 advertising piece. It pretty much confirmed the questions/theories that we had about a W555 strip back in this old thread from 2007.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=86586

Interesting that the players from the W555 strip shown in the 2007 thread aren't shown in the advertisement pictures but I'm sure that they would be found on the reverse side of the large box pictured in the ad.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by birdman42

Hm. Interesting that the ad promises 250 different pictures. OC says that there are "69+" in the set. I can't imagine that less than a third of the set has been discovered yet after all these years, so my conclusion is that Meyer never got all the way through their planned run.

Bill, it actually says that there are 250 pictures in the assortment that the jobber was to receive, not that there are 250 subjects in the set.

The ad is a great research find; thanks for sharing it.

The ad also says there are 72 small boxes in each container and 48 containers in a case. The containers sound like the equivalent of modern card wax boxes. I wonder if the containers actually had cards printed on them or if the images on the containers were different in size or other ways from the actual box cards?

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Bill, it actually says that there are 250 pictures in the assortment that the jobber was to receive, not that there are 250 subjects in the set.

At 4 per small box, the math doesn't quite work out... With 250 not being a multiple of 4. I guess if you were to subtract the 14 on the box(although I wouldn't, they don't appear to have full borders, since the ones on the smaller boxes appear to have a fairly defined border, or cut line) you would get 236, which is a multiple of 4, by 59. Assuming another panel of 14 on the other side of the box, would bring that number to 222, which is also not a multiple of 4...

Mathematically speaking. I'm led to believe that the quoted number of 250, is more than likely the number in the set(or assortment), or at one time was to be the intended number in the set. Maybe there were to be multiple series?

[GoldenAge50s]

With an issue of that style, wouldn't you expect there to be many shared boxes, like Mathewson-Collins, Collins-Cobb, Cobb- Mathewson?

That would allow for the 250 figure to be accurate as to the # of DIFFERENT individual subjects.