Mystery Solved - Pinpointing the dates of W590 cards

[glchen]

Originally Posted by glchen

According to the font theory since both the player and team name are in bold, the year of issue should be around 1928/29. Therefore, there wouldn't be "former" on the card, but the team name should theoretically have changed to Philadelphia A.L. rather than continue to stay with Detroit.

Unfortunately, the one of the many things that we don't know with the set is how consistent the issuers were with correcting the team and name changes. Did they simply forget to make the changes for Cobb or is the bold/bold part of the font theory disproven? Unfortunately, all of the uncut strips and panels that we have seen so far are from the 1925 year. If we could see a 1931 uncut strip, that might greatly help in dating these cards. Also, if Ty Cobb cards with his team as Philadelphia and with "Former" do appear, then we would probably need to re-assess this part of the font theory. However, the 1931 cards are extremely rare, which is why two new variations to this set were just added in the last year. It's tough to say if and when they would come out. The other thing that has not yet been proven is whether all of the same players that were issued in 1925 were also remained in 1931. For example, for the players that retired, we have seen that "Former" is now added to the card. However, we have not seen all of the players that retired having "Former" cards yet. (e.g., Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, etc) Therefore, it is still possible that for these retired players, they did not have "Former" added to their card or their card in the set was swapped out with another player (e.g., a Roy Spencer).

Now that new Hornsby and Wojo cards have been uncovered, it wouldn't surprise me if there were a Ty Cobb - Philadelphia - Former CF card out there. However, this is assuming that the manufacturer kept the same players on the sheets and bothered to always update them. They could have still kept Cobb as Detroit - CF or replaced him with another player or (non sports person).