e103 info

[esd10]

does anyone know anything about the E103 candy cards? I had seen one on ebay and i can find very little about them. so any help would be great.

[autograf]

http://www.oldcardboard.com/e/e1/e10...?cardsetID=744

[sportscardpete]

I'm not an expert, but I believe the appeal of these cards is the rarity of decent looking cards... The cards are made from thin paper stock (I could be wrong on that one). There aren't too many e103's with a grade of a 4 or above..

[barrysloate]

E103 is an extremely popular candy card set, with beautiful portraits of Cobb, Wagner, and Matty. It's extremely difficult to complete the set because not only are they expensive, but cards such as Tenney are almost impossible to find. You do generally see them in lower grade. There was a time where even low grade commons would fetch $400-500 each, but like all sets today prices are way down.

[esd10]

Ive read old cardboard and they tell you very little. Are they as rare as the e107? Can anyone tell me what to look for when buying one? Are the litho's like all the other candy cards for that era?Any other info from this type collector would be usefull.

[barrysloate]

E107 commons tend to sell for more than E103 commons, so I guess they are considered scarcer, but not by much. I've handled quite a few of both and would rate them pretty close in terms of scarcity (others may feel the E107's are much tougher).

[sportscardpete]

Personally from what I have seen e107's are much more rarer than e103's, and that could be up for serious discussion... But both are rarer than most caramel issues. I personally like the look of e107's, as the black and white color scheme really make the card seem like an old issue. If i were to look at an e103 I wouldn't really care about the back. I would look for a relatively crease free front, as creases seem prominent in this set.

[barrysloate]

I'm trying to think back over the years how frequently each have appeared for sale, and while E107 is tougher, I still think I've seen roughly the same number of each. Part of that may be because E107 is a set of 145 or so, and E103 is a set of only 30. Again, I'll say E107 is tougher, but not by a huge margin. Now of course, if you are talking about completing a set, E107 is way way tougher. But if you simply want to buy a common as a type card, they may be closer than is generally assumed.

[Bicem]

For what it's worth, doing a quick search on ebay, I saw 29 e103's and 1 e107.

[barrysloate]

Well, that's a huge difference for sure. However, E107 is not 29 times tougher. It may just be an anomaly. But fine, I'll concede that e107 is tougher. I just don't think E103 are all that easy.

[sportscardpete]

I wouldn't mind having either one

The ebay 27:1 ratio could just mean no one wants to sell their e107 's..

[esd10]

what where the e103's packaged in? i know caramels but was it a tin or a wax wrapper or someting else. what do you look for in a real e103? is it a litho or something else? i have never seen one in person.

[E93]

My gut instinct is that E103s are not as tough as E107s, but they are still one of the tougher E sets (E90-E107). To take a rough stab at numbers, I would guess there are less than ten of any given E107 and probably 25-30 of any given E103, though as Barry mentioned there are a couple that a very tough.

Ebay can be a rough indicator, but not perfect. E107s usually go to auction houses rather than Ebay, so it can be misleading. Conversely, also as mentioned by Barry, because the size of the E107 set is roughly five times as big as the E103, that can distort that actual rarity of any single card for those not paying attention to specifics.

On a side note, I was discussing these sets with Brian Terjung who is quite knowledgeable on these two sets and he suggested that they might be much more closely related than many have noticed. Hopefully he will chime in here with specifics. I believe he did some research linking Williams Caramel with Breisch-Williams.

JimB

[E93]

In terms of toughness, there are a couple ways to look at it: (1) how tough is it to find a type example (2) how tough is it to complete the set.

With the $ and not that much patience, one could find a type example from either set in a relatively short amount of time.

Completing either set is tough, but the E107 is insanely tough. In fact, i don't think anybody has ever completed it, though I know of at least one that is very close.

In ranking the difficulty in completing various caramel sets, I think the E107 must be the toughest with E105 Mello Mint not far behind. Some E105s are not hard, but about 40% of the set is VERY tough with a few cards only having a couple known examples. E103 would come after E105 in toughness to complete the set IMHO.

JimB

[terjung]

Thank you for the vote of confidence, Jim, but I am far from the most knowledgable about these two sets. Others like Scott B. and Brian McQueen know far more than I could hope to know about them. Nonetheless, I am quite familiar with both sets and feel that I can address their scarcity differences. In my opinion, E107s are far tougher than E103s. Since there are over 150 different examples of E107s (146 players plus a few team variations), it makes finding a type card of E107s not terribly difficult. The E103 set is much smaller, so finding a "type" may appear to be more difficult. Looking for specific players of one or the other can be tricky, however. Certainly, both sets have their commonly found cards and toughies, but if you take a middle of the road difficulty from each set, I'd surmise that E107 far outranks E103 in difficulty. I'd venture a guess that it is probably 3x harder to find a particular E107 than a comprarably difficult E103. Both E107 and E103 cards are tough to find in nice condition due to how thin the cards are. So, with both sets (but much more so with E107s), you sometimes have to take what you can get if you are looking for one of the more scarce cards in the set.

During the early 1900s, the caramel companies were competing with each other quite a bit and getting cannibalized. I think that the Williams from E103's Williams Caramel is the same Williams from Breisch-Williams (E107), but there was more than one Williams in the caramel game back then, so I don't have concrete proof of that. Brian McQueen wrote a very nice article in Old Cardboard a while back on the history of Breisch Williams. He may be able to confirm that link definitively based on the research that he did. Great topic about two of my favorite sets!

Just for fun, here is an example of each...

[esd10]

The thing i found is for the price of a common e107 i can buy a e103 hofer.

[terjung]

Originally Posted by esd10

The thing i found is for the price of a common e107 i can buy a e103 hofer.

I would think that the price of a E107 common should be less than an E103 HOFer.

[esd10]

there is a mordecai brown sgc auth for $500.00 i havent seen any e107 go for less than that.

[terjung]

Originally Posted by esd10

there is a mordecai brown sgc auth for $500.00 i havent seen any e107 go for less than that.

"Authentic" cards can be all over the map price-wise. So, that probably isn't the best to use as a price comparison. Having said that, it sounds like you might be able to pick up an E103 HOFer quite inexpensively!

[Bicem]

What Brian said.

I'll also add that finding a particular e107 is vastly more difficult than finding any particular e103, even Tenney.

For example, how long did it take Steve Murray to find his e107 Jacklitsch card? 10 years? How many Tenney's could you find in 10 years? When's the last time we've seen tough e107's like Chance or Wallace card come up for sale?