Posted By:
Zach RiceI agree with you, Frank. From the number of hole-punched examples out there, it does seem like some sort of promotion and not something done by a bored kid.
I also believe that the shape of the punched hole has a lot to do with proving that these holes were indeed a result of some sort of promotion. The first hand held hole puncher was patented in 1885, the first "standard" hole punch and hole punch that was readily available for sale was introduced in 1901. Now, there are plenty of hole punchers out there today that cut different shapes, but I find it unlikely that these would have been around and available to kids in 1915 and even if they were around, why would a kid willingly take out chunks of his baseball cards ? Many work places use out of the ordinary hole punchers to stamp items of promotion so the stamps can not be duplicated. I believe that to be the case for these E106s. I know at the pet store which I work at, our stamps for "frequent buyer cards" are in the shapes of little dog heads.
There is the dilemma to why some have more punches in them than others. Could it have been just a sour merchant on a bad day who didn't like kids ? Is it possible that the person that stamped Frank's Schaefer was a different person than who stamped my Tris Speaker ?
Just throwing some ideas out there....