Brian,
I missed this post from five years back. The W-503 cards are definitely a mis-categorized set, they should be an “E” card. This was one of John Spalding’s favorite sets to collect. The player selection, unique images, and challenge to complete were all contributing factors. Sometime in the 70’s / 80’s, John picked up a group of these cards from an original collector. The man indicated that he grew up in Oakland, California and bought them with slabs of caramel (similar to E-120/E-121 from the same era). As John continued to research the set, one of the sources indicated that he, too, remembered collecting them as a boy growing up in the St Louis area. That source was Buck Barker.
There was a group of them that turned up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 80's/ early 90's that all had a punch hole similar to the card in your initial post
While we still do not definitively know who the printer ,producer or marketer (s) were, we can say they were available in more than one metropolitan market.
Mark
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