Posted By:
Hal LewisTed:
From what I have been told by the folks who examined many of these "square corner" cards and the "rounded" cards at the SAME place and time...
they were able to determine several things:
1) All of the "rounded" corners appear to have been HAND CUT at the factory in 1947, because there is no "uniformity" whatsoever to ANY of the "rounded" corners on these cards.
2) A large number of "uncut" cards from this set were indeed found later... but they were PRINTED back in 1947 and then just never distributed. These have "square corners" but are identical in paper and printing when compared under microscope to the "round" ones.
3) Then there are even MORE "square" corner cards from this set that are simply REPRINTS made in modern times that are essentially worthless.
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This explains why you never collected any "square" ones in 1947... because the corners were all cut at the factory before they were inserted into the packages of bread (probably to prevent snagging and TEARING the bag into which the BREAD was being placed).
BUT... it also means that there ARE "square cornered" versions of the cards that are "real" and which were made in 1947 (and just never cut and distributed with bread).
SURE... I would PREFER to have the ROUND ones...
but as long as GAI knows how to tell a "square" card made in 1947 from a "square" reprint made in 1987...
then I am OK with it.
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I guess we may never know how much GAI knows about this set until we know FOR SURE that someone has had cards RETURNED and NOT GRADED by GAI due to being "modern reprints."
Has anyone had this happen??