Some Questions about Vintage Cards that Keep Me Awake at Night

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Posted By: John Spencer

They say an idle mind is a devil's workshop, but when mine is idle I think about vintage card enigmas, which shows it is idle a lot of the time. The top ones that keep me noodling are:
1. Why did Goudey use Nap Lajoie for the missing #106 in the '33 set when I believe he had been out of organized baseball since 1916? The only ones in the set from remotely the same period still active in the game were Rogers Hornsby, Burleigh Grimes, Eppa Rixey and Babe Ruth.
2. Why in the N172 Old Judge Anson in uniform so nearly impossible to find when his pose in a suit is relatively easy? "Cap" was notoriously vain, so maybe he thought he looked more distinguished in his Sunday best and somehow managed to have the other pulled.
3. Why are so many stars of the day missing from the T207 set, such as Cobb, Matty, Lajoie, and why if they included Tinker and Chance, didn't they include Evers. Money would seem to the obvious answer but who knows?
4. I may not be on solid ground here but, I don't believe that Walter Johnson is in any E card sets. Why not? He was in plenty of T card sets.
5. If, as Lew Lipset says, the E90-1 Mike Mitchell card is the T206 Wagner of E cards,why does it seem to fetch so relatively little at auction? Sure he was no star but it seems his card should be worth more than it brings.
6. Sure the Babe and Lou didn't get along all that well, particularly after Ruth called Gehrig, "a Mama's boy", but still couldn't Goudey have included Ruth in the '34 set among the high numbers behind "Chuck Klein says"?
Any help on these mysteries appreciated.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Why did Cracker Jack start printing the backs of their cards UPSIDE DOWN in 1915... after printing them right-side-up in 1914??

I believe that this HAD to have been a mistake on the printer's part that was too expensive to remedy after it was eventually discovered.

No other explanation makes sense, because the WORDS on the backs of the cards was DIFFERENT in 1915 than it was in 1914... so there was no need to print the back upside-down to differentiate between the two sets.

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Posted By: mike

Maybe it's easier to rotate the cards up rather than to the side

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Why did Major League Baseball allow "Play Ball" to print a 1940 card of Shoeless Joe Jackson when he had been BANNED from baseball for decades?

Surely MLB had some control over the rights of other companies to use the images of their players for a profit even back then.

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Posted By: PASJD

I think all the Chuck Klein says cards are National Leaguers.

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Posted By: HW

Hal, I think that the backs were printed upside down so that they could still be read after the cards were pasted in an album. If the top edge of the card was attached to the Cracker Jack album, its owner could still flip up the the bottom of the card and read the biography.

John, I have no idea why Lajoie was included in the 1933 Goudey set. Speaker is also included, but I think that he was still toiling in the minor leagues at the time. The T204 set is also void of many of the stars also (no Cobb, Mathewson, Lajoie, etc.) Johnson is in the E300 Plows set, but I do not think that he is any any others until the 1920's.

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Posted By: Greg Ecklund

Walter Johnson is also in the E91 American Caramel "generic" set

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Posted By: Julie

waist. That "144" and "176" are awful small.

Didn't the person who wrote the article on T207s in the last VCBC (what's that?) say another half set was panned, but didn't come off, which would partially explain the lack of great players in the set we have.

That's really interesting about Ruth not being in the '34 Goudey set because he and Gehrig didn't get along and the "Chuck Klein" cards all being National League...

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Posted By: david

i always wonder about ojs and scarcity between years and within years and how that related to the distribution. i also think about how many other collectors have a complete set of scrapps or how rare are my spotted ties or yum yums.

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Posted By: Scott

Maybe Mitchell doesn't fetch as much because he wasn't a star.

Interesting about Wagner and caramels - it could be that he had an aversion to sugar similar to the one Wagner had for cigarettes? That theory wouldn't explain his appearance in the Cracker Jack set unless they lied to get his agreement, telling him that they would not be caramel-coated. The other set he appeared in doesn't use his likeness, IMO. Very good question.

I always wondered why the ATC reign was so short-lived, but I think someone explained that - could we get a repeat of the story?

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Posted By: barrysloate

John- I have the perfect cure for vintage card questions that keep you awake at night: get plenty of sleep.

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Posted By: tbob

The T207 articles penned by Tim and I (oh how quickly they forget) only speculated as to an extension of the set. I've never seen anything, anywhere to explain why Evers, Wagner, Matty, Plank, Lajoie, Chase, et al are missing in action. Wish I knew...
The E90-1 Mitchell card is hard to figure. It is the toughest card in the "foundation" caramel card set. Seemingly anyone who moves from tobacco cards to caramel cards wants to tackle the E90-1 because it is THE caramel set, just as the T206 set is THE tobacco set and yet Mitchell, despite its scarcity doesn't sell for nearly as much as it should. Hard to figure. The only thing I can think of is that because it is nearly impossible to find a Joe Jackson, perhaps the "completists" steer away from the set and thus Mike Mitchell is not a priority with them. Or maybe, a lot of collectors consider the E90-1 set "complete" without Joe Jax and Mitchell, much like the T206 set is considered "complete" without Wagner, Doyle, Plank and Magie. I know my T206 set is "done" despite the lack of the Big 3 Plus 1.

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Posted By: Cy

Another very peculiar thing is that the Cy Young (Bare Hand Showing) is numbered 511 in the SCD price guide. Cy Young won exactly 511 games.

Stranger than fiction!

Cy

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Posted By: BCD

I think Lew may have thought that then but there is E-cards just as tough to find. At this point it would be hard to tell anyway as many cards that were rare are much harder to find now having been sifted out of the circulation of recycled cards.