E98 (more discussion)

[caramelcard]

Sorry to start another thread, but perhaps this one could focus less on value and grading issues. Finds like this don't come along very often and I know some of my E98 pals are pretty pumped about it.


As someone who has collected E98s for a long time, this new find excites me. I would love to pick up more of them and I don't care too much if they're worth less. Hope they are in fact.

To me, the interesting thing here is what this find might reveal about the cards themselves.

Let's talk about the possibilities here.

This find could've been the average or standard amount of cards delivered from the print shop to a retailer. They possibly could've picked the colors they wanted or perhaps the printers had run out of one color by this point.

Or this could have been the rest of the print stock that was never either inserted into a product or given to individual retailers. In other words, property of the printers.

I obviously don't know the details of why it ended up where it did, but the owners could've had some tie to the printers or the anonymous company that sponsored the production or they might've owned a shop and never used all of the cards as premiums (or just fell in love with them and kept them).

The fact that they were binded in stacks by twine is interesting. I'd love to know more about how they were binded (how many cards, even amount in each stack?) or any other details about how the cards were found. I think, if I'm reading it correctly, each stack was one player. That might suggest that the sheets were all one player.

Anyone have any additional info from Heritage? Any other details stick out to you guys?

Rob

[philliesphan]

Rob-

I'm amazed at how well the centering is on nearly ever card in this group.

m

[barrysloate]

Rob- my thoughts about it are pretty much what you said. Some retailer ordered a large group of these around 1910, let's say 1000 is a reasonable number, and started giving them out to customers at point of purchase. And not too far into it he gave up. Maybe he went out of business. Maybe it became too much of a nuisance. Maybe kids kept coming into the store asking for the cards without buying anything. Whatever the reason, the merchant took the remaining 750 cards, virtually all pristine and unused, put them neatly in a box, and threw them into his attic.

And I'm sure he was not the only one to do this. All over the country, for whatever reason, unused promotional cards went into storage. But what is so extraordinary about these is they survived for more than a century without being thrown out. The family never moved. They never cleaned out the attic. They didn't find the cards in 1960, and decide to sell them then because somebody offered the princely sum of $100 for them. They survived forever. Imagine selling a house to somebody and inadvertently leaving a million dollars in the attic? Well somebody did exactly that.

My story is pure speculation but I bet it's also not that far from what actually happened. And the new buyers of the house not only got a home but a winning lottery ticket thrown in for good measure. What an amazing story.

[caramelcard]

I think I saw there were no Lajoie cards in the group.

That's probably because Lajoie was the most popular card for this owner being from Ohio. He gave them all away or had them in his store/shop. (Not sure if this has already been mentioned.)

Marc,

Good point about the centering. The E98s had pretty darn good quality control and were sometimes diamond cut left to right like one of the Jennings cards in the group. I haven't seen a lot of miscut cards on the fronts, top to bottom.

Barry,

Great post. Do you know how many total cards were in this find?

Rob

[Rob D.]

Originally Posted by caramelcard

I think I saw there were no Lajoie cards in the group.

That's probably because Lajoie was the most popular card for this owner being from Ohio. He gave them all away or had them in his store/shop. (Not sure if this has already been mentioned.)

Rob,

Not sure I agree -- at least 100 percent.

Bob M. long has said that the red Lajoie is one of the tougher E98s. If that card -- outside of this find -- could be found in the same numbers as other reds, then I would agree with your theory. But if a red Lajoie was indeed a scarcity before this find, it would make sense that there wouldn't be a lot of them in this group. (Although the fact that there wasn't at least one strikes me as odd. It is certainly possible that the original owner didn't have as many Lajoies to begin with.)

Hope this makes sense. It's definitely fun to speculate.

Rob

[marcdelpercio]

Perhaps it's a combination of the region and player that makes certain colored cards scarce. For example, say for whatever reason that a high quantity of the red cards went to the Ohio area and that these were distributed as a premium. Naturally, Lajoie would be the first card that every kid would want to choose, trade, handle, etc and this led to a much greater percentage of red Lajoies having been long since lost or obliterated, while the stacks of the less popular regional players wouldn't get nearly the same demand and attention.

[barrysloate]

I don't know exactly but I think it's around 750.

I agree that the Lajoie's all went first. Can't explain why there are no Walshes, or only one Matty. Still some mysteries for sure.

And I know I'm not the first to think this, but I believe that E98 were not candy cards at all. They share designs with some candy issues, but they were distributed in a different manner than other E-cards.