Hobby History of 1916 M101?

[topcat61]

Hey everyone, Did Jefferson Burdick or fellow Hobby Pioneers write any articles, research or come up with a checklist on the 1916 M101-4/5 and related sets from the 1930's -1960's?

There's an abundance of information on our T sets, but I was wondering how Burdick came to designating the issuers of the M101-4/5 and similar D sets which too appear to have been issued by Mendelsohn Publishing such as Morehouse Baking and Weil Baking? Any information would be excellent, thanks.

[Baseball Rarities]

Originally Posted by topcat61

Hey everyone, Did Jefferson Burdick or fellow Hobby Pioneers write any articles, research or come up with a checklist on the 1916 M101-4/5 and related sets from the 1930's -1960's?

There's an abundance of information on our T sets, but I was wondering how Burdick came to designating the issuers of the M101-4/5 and similar D sets which too appear to have been issued by Mendelsohn Publishing such as Morehouse Baking and Weil Baking? Any information would be excellent, thanks.

Try and pick up Old Cardboard Issue #16 from the Summer of 2008. Tim Newcomb and Todd Schultz wrote a great article on the Mendelsohn sets.

[nolemmings]

Net54 member DKathm@n posted an article written by Lionel Carter from the Jul-Aug 1958 issue of Sportfan newsletter, which makes it clear (to me anyway) that these sets had gone decades with little to no reporting. I say that assuming that he--Carter--would have been aware of the work and reporting done by Burdick and others who preceded him, yet the 1958 article basically announces the m101-4 set as a new discovery from Preston Orem. Thus two of the then hobby giants were just learning details of m101-4. The article is also inaccurate in a few respects, indicating the cards were not well known to the hobby and were not well checklisted.

Also, Mike Aronstein wrote an article about the Famous and Barr set in the 1971 issue of The Trader Speaks, and stated "I believe this is the first time this set has been seen much less check-listed [only 188 cards confirmed at the time]". Because F&B is the most common advertisement seen on m101s except for The Sporting News, it seems very odd that these cards went more than a half century without much if any reporting.

Perhaps someone can post scans of the m101-4/5, D329, 350,352, and H801-9 descriptions used by Burdick in his various iterations of the ACC, to see if we can spot other clues as to how these descriptions may have changed over the various years the ACC was published.

[topcat61]

I'd love to see what prefixes Burdick used throughout the years with some of these issues -especially the M and D sets. Seeing the progression of how these sets came to be as we know them today is really something fascinating!!

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by topcat61

I'd love to see what prefixes Burdick used throughout the years with some of these issues -especially the M and D sets. Seeing the progression of how these sets came to be as we know them today is really something fascinating!!

I can post the M-card sections of all four editions of the ACC, but I won’t be able to do it until at least Monday.

[nolemmings]

Very much appreciated, David. Maybe scan the D329, 350,352, and H801-9 also (which covers Weil Baking, Standard Biscuit, Morehouse Baking and Globe)

[Leon]

Originally Posted by nolemmings

Very much appreciated, David. Maybe scan the D329, 350,352, and H801-9 also (which covers Weil Baking, Standard Biscuit, Morehouse Baking and Globe)

Here ya go..from the (last) 1960 update

[nolemmings]

Thanks Leon. That's a start. I thought I had seen and scanned all of them (although I can't find any of them), but clearly had not seen this one previously.

Some cool tidbits already. Do you have the m101 page too? (he asked greedily)

[trdcrdkid]

Todd -- here are the M card pages from the 1960 ACC (except the intro and M1, the Forest & Stream Animal Series). I'll photograph the relevant pages from the earlier editions of the ACC and post them here soon.

[trdcrdkid]

I couldn't find my copy of the 1946 American Card Catalog -- I think I must have put it in one of the boxes when I was organizing and storing my old hobby publications a few months ago. I'll try to dig that out later, but in the meantime I do have the 1939 United States Card Catalog and the 1953 ACC.

The first three pages below are from the 1939 USCC, and they're all I could find for what we now call D, M, or H baseball cards. This catalog was basically just Burdick by himself cataloguing his collection, with maybe some other sets that he happened to know about; what we call M cards (including M116 on the third page) were lumped together as "miscellaneous". The fourth picture below is from the 1940 supplement to the USCC, and it reclassifies M116s as 14 in the "Old Advertising Cards" group.






The following pages are from the 1953 ACC. By this time, Burdick and his collaborators had pretty much come up with the broad classifications we know today, but they made quite a few changes in numbering of specific sets between this edition and the 1960 edition. The 1946 edition is closer to the 1953 than to the 1939, but it has its own idiosyncrasies. I'll post those pages when I'm able to dig it out.

[nolemmings]

Wow, this info is telling in what it doesn't tell us about the 1916 Mendelsohn cards. Almost no info prior to 1960 on any of the sets.

It seems that prior to 1960, there was a single reference to Standard Biscuit back in 1939. That’s it for bakery-issued Mendelsohn cards. There was only one reference to a single “M” set for these cards, in the 1953 edition, called M5 with no issue date info but a reference to 200 cards. Finally, there were no “H” type sets for Mendelsohn cards and no others either prior to the 1960 ACC.

The Carter article I referenced earlier from 1958 made mention of Weil and Morehouse Baking, as well as the Globe Clothing set, so it appears those were known to Carter and Orem by that time, but still, 13 advertisers seem to have been completely unknown even after the 1960 ACC.

Maybe the 1946 edition has something but I am not very hopeful.

[trdcrdkid]

I finally dug out my copy of the 1946 American Card Catalog. Following are the pages showing the D cards, the M cards, and the miscellaneous H cards. The handwritten notes are by Walter Corson, whose copy this was. I took closer pictures of Corson's notes at the end of the M card and miscellaneous H card sections. These were not officially part of the 1946 ACC, and they mostly involve sets issued after 1946 but before the next edition of the ACC in 1953.

[nolemmings]

Thanks again David. The handwritten additions to your copy seem to mirror many of those found in the 1953 eidtion of the ACC. I wonder who copied whom?--Did Corson supply info that Burdick then included in the updated ACC or did Corson just borrow a 1953 editio and hand-copy the changes into his older book? Anyway, you were kind enough to reference a 1940 supplement to the USCC, and I am wondering if there are other known annual supplements of any kind that we could track down and consult. It seems there was a flurry of discoveries of the Mendelsohn sets between the 1953 and 1960 versions of the ACC, and it would be nice to know how those collectors or the hobby overall shared its information during that time.

The ACC entries as to Mendelsohn's sets remain ambiguous if not mysterious to me. The 1946 and 1953 editions first identified "M5" as a Sporting News set, singular. We now know that The Sporting News was not affiliated with m101-5, as it was not advertised for sale in that paper nor did the card backs bear its advertising. So Burdick would have no reason to associate TSN with m101-5, right? Thus I would assume Burdick was referencing m101-4, yet Carter and Orem seemed beside themselves to have uncovered the m101-4 set in 1958, implying that they understood the previously cataloged Sporting News set to be m101-5. This is confusing, unless I'm just missing something.

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by nolemmings

Thanks again David. The handwritten additions to your copy seem to mirror many of those found in the 1953 eidtion of the ACC. I wonder who copied whom?--Did Corson supply info that Burdick then included in the updated ACC or did Corson just borrow a 1953 editio and hand-copy the changes into his older book?

Good questions. I know that Corson knew Burdick pretty well, and I'm sure he contributed research to the 1953 ACC, though he wasn't one of its official editors (who were Burdick, Charles Bray, Gene Di Nardo, and Woody Gelman). I suspect that some of Corson's annotations were made between 1946 and 1953, but those that exactly correspond to additions in the 1953 edition are copied from that edition.

Originally Posted by nolemmings

Anyway, you were kind enough to reference a 1940 supplement to the USCC, and I am wondering if there are other known annual supplements of any kind that we could track down and consult.

My copy of the 1939 USCC (which was John Wagner's) includes the 1940, 1941, and (I believe) 1942 supplements, only the first of which includes anything relevant to your question. After 1942, Burdick realized that it would make more sense to do a whole new edition of the catalog, so he stopped doing the annual supplements.

Originally Posted by nolemmings

It seems there was a flurry of discoveries of the Mendelsohn sets between the 1953 and 1960 versions of the ACC, and it would be nice to know how those collectors or the hobby overall shared its information during that time.

A lot of information was shared through hobby publications, mainly Card Collectors Bulletin (which I have mostly complete from 1955 on but am missing from 1951-54), Sport Fan (from 1955), and Sport Hobbyist (from 1956). I've posted a lot of relevant articles printed in those publications in 1953-60, including the 1958 Lionel Carter article in Sport Fan on M cards that you've cited. A fair amount of research was also shared through letters between individual collectors, many of which Leon has (and a much smaller number of which I have). One thing I don't have, but have been trying to get, is E. C. Wharton-Tigar's Cartophilic Typed Listings from the early 1960s with checklists of US tobacco cards. I'm pretty sure Leon has these.

Originally Posted by nolemmings

The ACC entries as to Mendelsohn's sets remain ambiguous if not mysterious to me. The 1946 and 1953 editions first identified "M5" as a Sporting News set, singular. We now know that The Sporting News was not affiliated with m101-5, as it was not advertised for sale in that paper nor did the card backs bear its advertising. So Burdick would have no reason to associate TSN with m101-5, right? Thus I would assume Burdick was referencing m101-4, yet Carter and Orem seemed beside themselves to have uncovered the m101-4 set in 1958, implying that they understood the previously cataloged Sporting News set to be m101-5. This is confusing, unless I'm just missing something.

You're right that it's confusing, and I don't think you're missing much. These sets are confusing to sort out, especially when you're coming at them without any prior knowledge, as the guys in the 50s were doing.