1949 Leaf Cards Skip Numbered?

[tedzan]

In 1949, Leaf intended to have 168 cards in their BB set. As we all know, they issued two series of 49 cards each = 98 cards.

So, what happened to the other 70 cards ? We simply dont know. As a 10 year old kid in 1949, I collected these BB cards.
I spent many of my pennies buying Leaf's trying to put together a complete set, because we didn't have checklists and the
card's numbers were all over the place (from 1 to 168).

LEAF GUM skip-numbered these cards simply as a "marketing trick", so that us kids would keep buying cards. And, believe me,
it worked.

Goudey played a similar "trick" with their 1933 BB set when they didn't issue 21 of their Low # cards until late in the Fall of '33.
And of course, their Lajoie card was not available till 1934.


TED Z

[barrysloate]

Since Leaf didn't issue cards after 1949, maybe they had planned to fill in the missing numbers but simply gave up for economic reasons. If the cards weren't selling well, perhaps losing market share to the Bowmans, they easily could have ceased production.