Great job finding the 3 different boxes, but I have to disagree with how you’ve ordered them. It seems like too much shuffling of cards for no reason. Here’s what I think makes more sense:
1) The original box was issued in 1929 with 100 players, 4 boxes of 25 with Babe
Ruth in the orange box.
2) Probably to increase sales of the other boxes, they decided to put Babe Ruth
in all 4 boxes. To do this, they removed the last card in each list (Haines from
the blue box, Todt from the coral box and Seibold from the canary box) and
added the phrase “A Babe Ruth Picture in every Box”. This is the box you call
the final box. These two boxes have the header:
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3) I think what you call the transitional box is really the final box. They changed the header to:
5E330CF9-447D-48D4-BA37-F9AE15F9316A.jpg
So, they’ve decided to make the orange and coral boxes be all American League players and the blue and canary boxes be all National League players (except for Ruth of course who is still in each box). To do this, they need 48 American League cards, 48 National League cards and Ruth. But after removing Haines, Todt and Seibold they have 46 AL cards and 50 NL cards. So they added Todt (AL) back in and issued a new card of Hadley to get the 48 needed AL cards. They then removed Leach and Roush from the NL cards to get down to 48.
It should also be mentioned that Regan is counted as an AL card even though he is printed with Cinncinati NL. He never played for Cinncinati and was on Boston AL when the cards were issued ( so somebody mixed up Reds for Red Sox). He is in the orange box.
I think this accounts for why the changes were made. So the old story of why the short prints are there is mostly true. Haines, Todt and Seibold were removed for the Ruth card, but Hadley was only added at the end to get the last needed AL card. Todt was also added in at the end which explains why his cards are more plentiful than the other short prints.
- Dave