Net54baseball.com Forums - 1916-1920 Date for "Big Head" Strip Cards

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Leon (Post 2420679)

This is a great, old thread.
I guess I collected the set at one time. Now, I am relegated to type cards again...
I always like the ones with full borders...

Whereas I feel lucky (without an 'e') to have one with narrow-ass borders.

Brian

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spike (Post 2420242)

I studied this era's strip cards for a few years and propose looking at these "Big Head" cards as an update to W516's checklist for 1921's opening day. It could be in response to complaints that original W516 strips looked dingy or empty.

W516 itself targeted 1920, since it lists Babe Ruth as "Yanks pitcher." He first played for NYY in 1920 _and_ switched to fulltime outfield duty that same year, which soon made "pitcher" out-of-date.

If this matches their approach, art tweaks give each player more space and better highlight faces and uniforms. Based on earlier research in this thread, they still made name/face mistakes and must've focused on Ruth's reputation as "famous slugger who wears Yankee pinstripes" and missed his handedness. Those "+" printing guide marks also appear on W516s with thicker stock, so must've come off similar equipment.

I attached images showing these W516 changes, plus similar tweaks to this company's W529 boxing and Hollywood actor strips. In each case, they removed extraneous text, filled up each card image, and made them more engaging. Too bad they made so few cards in this style!

Nice Matt, I like how the Ruth and Cobb do seem to have utilized/tweaked the W516 images to stress different aspects of their playing, the Ruth (who has the same body positioning and even head tilt) to depict him as batter, and the Cobb (whose body and head lines up almost exactly as it does on his W516) as a runner, even though as depicted he could only be running back to the base as the result of a pickoff throw.

The Ruth reminds me of the Schapira card (shown below, not mine) issued at about the same time frame as the Big Head set that also utilized a Ruth throwing image and converted it into a batting pose to reflect his transition from pitcher to a full-time player, in this case just awkwardly adding a dropped bat.

Brian

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianp-beme (Post 2420711)

The Ruth reminds me of the Schapira card (shown below, not mine) issued at about the same time frame as the Big Head set that also utilized a Ruth throwing image and converted it into a batting pose to reflect his transition from pitcher to a full-time player, in this case just awkwardly adding a dropped bat.
Brian

Great example and looks like the same approach!

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianp-beme (Post 2420703)

Whereas I feel lucky (without an 'e') to have one with narrow-ass borders.

Brian

Any Big Head is a good Big Head.
Just don't get to feeling luckey :eek:

From my last collection...quite a few narrow ass borders or virtual borders, in the group. Like I say, they are all good I just prefer the bigger borders, however, on sets like this we have to lower our standards sometimes...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leon (Post 2421413)

That was a nice Big Heads near set you had Leon with plenty of border widths evident. There are some fun cards in the set including the Closed Eyes Burns and the Blue Faced Aliens Bancroft and Doyle.

I do find it revealing that your Heinie was a narrow ass version.

Brian

Leon- drool on your Sam rice & ping bodie
One of the few cards I need
I learned I can’t be picky
Just take it when available and
upgrade from there