expert cracker jack and pack help needed ASAP :-0

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Posted By: mr. moses

I have an opportunity to buy what is described as a circa 1915 unopened cracker jack box. Are there any people who know and or have a box that they KNOW is from the correct time frame. Was there notice somewhere on the box that a prize or card was inside? I know there was a redemption for the the 1915 CJ's.... Was there an insert or redemption found in the box? I have included as small scan of the front. I do not have a pic of the back. Please share what you know if you can.....

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Posted By: jay behrens

It looks right for that era, but I couldn't say 1914 or 1915 for certain.

Jay

I love pinatas. You get to beat the crap of something and get rewarded with candy.

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Posted By: JimB

According to the Cracker Jack website, sailor bob and his dog first appear on packages in 1918.
JimB

http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php

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Posted By: leonl

Nice detective work. So the box would be a nice companion piece but no card inside.....BTW, my instinct tells me that box has been opened and closed before.....maybe with glue...

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Posted By: mr. moses

for the quick response - good starting point for me. Sounds resonable - Im going to try and pull more packs and facts from a google - doubt I would be successful before the auction's end so much appreciated. I know there's a book on CJ (probably a couple) but not in my bookstore (to steal a peek). Neat and close to the date but 1918+ just doesn't do it for me. I need the real thing

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Posted By: mr. moses

for it's unopened value (and the price it might imply) without knowing more about it - seeing it in person - comfortable price level - more knowledge - whatever. If I could have determined it was period I had no problem paying a couple/three hundred dollars strictly for it's overall display and relevance value. If I got some miracle pack - well life's a crap shoot I do appreciate the "heads-up" though. I've been collecting packages of many types for a while and have seen it all. That is when I look closely. I usually don't take the right amount of time to examine something when I'm "on the run" at a show. 90+ year old cartons of sticky candy manufactured within a specific small window - known entities for the collector and even general seller - and "unopened" as well.......... That's always a signal for me to take my time to examine all the relevant facts - and then use my worst judgement

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Posted By: Rob

"if" it was an unopened box of 1914/15 CJ, and you won the auction, and you KNEW it had a card inside, would you keep it unopened, or would the urge to open it and see if a matty/cobb/jackson etc was inside be too overwhelming?

Rob

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Posted By: Rhys

I am going to go out on a limb and say that a baseball card of thin paperstock pressed up against caramel for almost 100 years would not be worth the temptation of opening the box. Your chances of pulling anything out of that box other than a black brick of deteriorated carbon with the eaten away remnants of a baseball card are slim to none. Even a Joe Jackson in that condition would not be worth much. Having said that, I am with Leon on the probability of this being actually sealed as originally produced. The candy probably would have eaten the cardboard away by now had it really been sitting in there for all this time unless they were lined with plastic which seems unlikely for 1915.

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Posted By: peter chao

I'd eat the crackerjacks and throw away the card. I guess that's the reason why I have such an anemic collection.

Peter

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Posted By: mr. moses

not the steak. Unopened material is the joy and sorrow of life unless it's just the package itself that does it for you. Opening a box unless you have more than one is russian roulette (can that still be PC?). Even in tobacco where the stamp/cancel/factory designation are within the proper time frame and serve to narrow the extraneous factors quite a bit - there is no guarantee that a card made it in there and especially not the "lottery" card worth a zillion dollars. Same with the package. As to the CJ cards, I would imagine they were inserted in a season of sorts and not thruout the whole year. You would need to know more than just the year. What if things other than cards were inserted at the same time. Your box might have top or whatever.... As for the re-sealing and staining thing; who knows. The package with product could have survived. I have products from 1860's that remain full (no; not my grandmother and had similar kinds of contents. At a certain point the candy begins to disintegrate (depending on storage) but the package has long since absorbed whatever came into contact with it. The resealing issue would be limited to whether someone wanted to see what was inside or not and then some contemporaneous or subsequent attempt to remedy that - or drying of the seals. I have encountered both types of examples. I have also found 100 year old things that for whatever reason remain intact..... I WOULD pay a good deal more than the 75.00 I bid on the post 1918 pack

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Posted By: Anthony

Trevor Hocking had/has a '15 CJ box- I don't think it had the sailor boy on it.

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Posted By: Lyman

Henry, that is a very nice example of an early CJ box but it is definitely not from 1914/1915. The 1915 box looked like this:



The answer to your question is in Issue #9 (Fall 2006) of Old Cardboard magazine as per the following excerpts:

1) From page 23 (side panel; the same point is also made by JimB earlier in this thread): "... the [logo of] the now familiar Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo ... was not introduced until 1918--a few years after the baseball card sets were issued."

2) From the magazine cover and page 21 (illustration across lower portion of page): An image of the CJ box (the one in the above scan) was taken from a period poster promoting the 1915 baseball cards. The image of the box on the same poster as examples of the 1915 cards almost certainly shows the box design to be the same as the one that was used to distribute the cards.

Hope this helps.
Lyman

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Posted By: mr. moses

Lyman I have that issue and can't for the life of me remember seeing the box. Not CRS I think I must have just glossed over it. Hate when I do that I bid for the box last night anyway. Bid 75.00 and when I was topped I threw in 100.00 bid. Lot went for 110. + buyer's penalty. I guess the wife and I can go out for Mickey D's.....

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Posted By: barrysloate

Buyer's penalty?...that's seller's bonus for all his hard work!