Quote:
Originally Posted by steve B
To me the why is the puzzle.
Boxing and Football don't have as many differences in the printing, and If I'm not messing up the timeline came out before Baseball.
My general feeling was that it wasn't poor sales, but much better than expected sales
The shop I worked for saved the masks used to make the plates for a long time. Some for years. At least until the Hunts drove silver up... Anyway, we could have easily reprinted many jobs exactly the same as earlier.
But if Leaf printed to their expected sales, and threw out the masks, those would have to be redone.
The other possibility would be responding to complaints, like "who wants a PINK baseball card!"
Or having another place do more cards when needed.
Or... if the ones with the lines came first, eliminating the lines would make the job cheaper as it uses less ink. That little difference may not seem like a lot, but over a lot of sheets it adds up.
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Hi Steve
I am one of the few guys (or probably the only guy) left on Net54 that collected the 1948 thru 1949 LEAF cards (Pirates, Boxers, BB, and FB).
I kept the Baseball and Boxing cards. But, sold most of my Pirates and Football cards.
You are correct....LEAF did not expect how popular these cards would be (especially their Sportscards). For example, the 1948 Boxers were so popular, Leaf continued printing
them into 1949 (check out the Tony Zale examples).
1948 issue .................................................. ....... 1949 issue
This BB set has one of the highest ratios of HOFers/Subjects (20/98) than most BB sets. Of the 20 - HOFers in the 1949 LEAF set, the Indians lead with these 5 - HOFers:
Spring series cards
.
Summer series cards (short-prints)
..
..
LEAF's Quality Control left a lot to be desired..... as you and I know from having traded and compared our numerous color variations. For example......
And then, there is BLUE or no BLUE.
I had a near mint Jackie Jensen with a white background (like the above Mizell Platt.card). I regret selling it years ago.
TED Z
T206 Reference
.