FWIW, my collection has 16 cards (from a blue strip and a white strip), and the inventory is consistent with Iggy's theory that Blue/Foxx/Maranville/Miller/Traynor W553s don't exist.
I've scanned the cards and also made a group scan arranged vertically in the same order as Iggy's strips:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...8J8HD&lb=1&s=O
The blank row near the bottom is for the missing Gehrigs-- maybe my Grandpa stuck them in his bicycle tires? or hated the Yankees??
Iggy, I'm one of the newbies in the audience, so could you continue the history lesson and explain why it's commonly accepted that W553s came in strips of *five*, as opposed to strips of *ten* that might have been more commonly/conveniently distributed after being cut into two strips of 5 (or 4)?
Clearly, your strips of 4 don't jibe with the strip-of-5 story. Also, if you look at my "reconstructed strips" scan, the way the torn cards match up like a jigsaw puzzle makes me think that these may have originally been a strip of 10:
* The tops of the Frisches and bottom of the Ruth are the only cards that look machine-cut. (Bottom of white-Frisch and top of Hornsby are straight, but maybe they were trimmed after being torn since you can see the cut lines?)
* The tear-matches between Simmons-and-Cochrane and Cochrane-and-Grove especially make it seem that these weren't just strips of 5 (or 4). Granted, with the missing Gehrigs and trimmed Hornsby, it's far from clear that these were strips of ten. But hopefully there are some clues in here to add to the existing collective knowledge about these cards.
Iggy, how do your strips match up as a strip of 10? I could be fooling myself, but looks like the top of the Frisch and bottom of Ruth are straight, while the other edges are slightly diagonal and might match up?
Cheers,
Mike
PS, Individual cards can be seen in the gallery:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2264&k=NJ8J8HD