1936 Goudey R322 front/back combos

[DaveW]

Does anybody have a checklist of all the front/back combos that are possible for the R322 Goudey Black and White cards? Does anybody even have a list of all the possible backs? If I wanted to put together a master set of all combos, how many cards would there be? I'd be willing to try to put this list together if nobody has done it before, but I'd hate to do all that work and find that it already exists. Thanks in advance,
- Dave

[DaveW]

OK, I see that there is not much interest in this set but I will discuss what I've learned so far in the off-chance that somebody in the future will be interested. I've looked through all the cards that I could find on the internet and I've determined that there are 25 different backs. Each back has 2 "plays" on it - each one is the result of a single pitch (i.e. ball, strike, double, foul, etc). I assume that the game was played by flipping a card over and using the result to keep score of your ballgame (just like keeping the scorebook for a game today). Since each card is a single pitch, you would need hundreds of cards or have to reshuffle often to finish a 9 inning game. I also assume that this was pretty boring and the game wasn't too popular. I also don't see any evidence (like a bend in the middle of the cards) to suggest that the cards were shuffled very much.
So, how many front/back combos are there? If each card came with each of the possible backs, there would be 625 combos. I doubt that there were that many. So far, the most I have seen is 7 fronts for any one back and 7 backs for any one front. That would make 175 possible combos. I don't really have enough data yet to say that that is the correct number. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the real number is 8. I'll post again later when I have more data.
- Dave

[steve B]

I seem to recall seeing 108 front back combos somewhere, probably the big book. But the 2010 edition only says numerous.

Steve B

[DaveW]

I've already found about 125 different combos and I just started Monday. I'm not sure what the final tally will be, but I would have thought that somebody would have figured it out by now.

[DaveW]

While working on the front/back combos for the 1936 R322 set, I made an interesting discovery. The "plays" on the backs of the cards are identical to the plays on the backs of the 1935 R325 set (the Knot Hole League Game cards). Here is an example for card #2 in both sets:

In order, these are R325 front; R325 back; R322 back

As you can see, the text and the font is identical for both sets - they must have reused the plates.
What's also interesting is that while the front of the Knot Hole Game cards says that there are 100 cards, only 24 cards were ever issued (Goudey printed sheets of 24 cards, so this makes sense). But the 1936 set has 25 card fronts and 25 different card backs - which include all 24 of the known Knot Hole Game backs plus one new one. Why did they make 1 extra back and 1 extra front?

Note: Most publications say the R325 Knot Hole Game cards are from 1937, but that doesn't really make sense. There is a 1935 copyright on the card and the 2 teams mentioned on the front played in the 1934 World Series (Cards and Tigers).

[DaveW]

Well I've scoured every Ebay auction as well as everywhere I could think of on the web and I've found 145 different front/back combos so far. I am beginning to think that there will be 168 combos, so I'd like to ask for some help. If you collect this set, could you look through your cards and send me a list of which fronts you have with which backs? If the back has Ball/Out, Foul/Ball or Strike/Ball then please give me the first 2 words of one of the plays so I can tell which back it is. Thanks in advance! I really appreciate it. I'll be happy to share any of my data or results with anybody that is interested.
- Dave

p.s. Has anybody seen an uncut sheet of this set (or have a scan)? That would also help.