1929 Kashin R316: any examples of back stamps?

[Baseball Bob]

FURTHER TO THE THREAD....ANY EXAMPLES OF BACKSTAMPS LIKE LEON POSTED BELOW?

Howdy pre-war community! My name is Eric Schmidtke, and I am doing research on the above titled set.

I have done quite a bit of research, but at this stage I am stuck on several questions, and I need help. If you prefer to answer me via private message, my email is ericschmidtke@yahoo.com.

First of all, do you have any idea who Kashin Publications were? I can find no record of them anywhere in cyberspace. I have checked archives in NYC and basically searched all over with no results. Is it possible that they were a subsidiary of another company (say maybe Spalding)? They seem to have only existed for a couple of years. I am aware that they produced the R315 and probably the W554 and W553 sets, as well as the Movie Stars set. The Leader Novelty set may also be connected to them somehow since the photos used are essentially identical.

How were the cards sold, and for how much? This is a multi-part question, and it relates to the "short prints".
The colored boxes are clearly the primary mechanism used for marketing, but I have also heard allusions to sales in single card packs, and seen one example sold on the web that purported to be one of these, although the item had no identifying marks on it and looked hand-made to me. Were the cards marketed in the colored boxes on store shelves like that, or were they dispensed from a machine? I saw the example Leon posted on this website some time ago of the promotional stamp on one, so they seems to have had some use in that capacity. Have you ever seen any other forms of packaging? Would these cards perhaps have been sold mail-order, since the boxes are not printed with retail prices?

It seems to me that Kashin was a small enough outfit that they probably did not do the physical printing themselves. They probably obtained their images from a middleman press agency, as they are clearly not made from the original Conlon negatives. What do you think?

Do you know the geographic extent of the marketing? I know the "made in USA" stamps indicate they sold in Canada, but were sales limited to the Northeast?

Have you ever seen any print advertising for these cards in old newspapers or magazines?

I have done considerable research to constrain the issue timing and I think I have that nailed, but would like to hear you opinions.

Lastly, what do you know about the origin of the "short prints" Seibold, Haines, Hadley and Todt? I have read the "substitution theory"; that Kashin created a 100 card set with no Ruth, then decide to add a Ruth to each box and the short prints were the cards that got tossed. I have also seen the idea that the single card sales included the short prints and they were discontinued prior to the colored boxes being issued. I struggle to understand why a company selling baseball cards would even think of not including a Ruth card, so the substitution theory bothers me. I think it might have something to do with the printing and packaging processes, but I don't know enough about that yet.

Lastly, why would many of the greatest stars (say Pipgras, Sisler, Cochrane, etc.) be omitted in favor of lesser known players?

Wherever possible, if you can provide a reference(s) for your information that would be of great help to me. If you don't know the answer to a question but know someone who might, please pass me their contact info.

All the best to all of you out there who, like me, find this to be an awesome set!

Regards
Eric