1921 Koester's Bread Cards on E-Bay

[bcbgcbrcb]

Dan:

It sounds like you put in the time and effort that I was too lazy to do and you were rewarded nicely for it! My guess is that as long as you are able to provide documentation of the Lew Lipset auction showing the cards cut from a sheet to SGC, they will probably encapsulate any/all of the cards from last night's auctions as "Authentic" only as they were all hand cut.

[rhettyeakley]

I actually have a major problem with the grading companies encapsulating anything as a Koesters Bread card that isn't one of the exclusive cards I wrote about earlier.

While these cards were all likely Koesters as they obviously came from the same sheet/find. The problem lies in that every W575-1 of Dave Bancroft leaping in the air could then be deemed to be a Koesters Bread card and then be "worth" multiples over what it should. Even though these have the provenance as being Koesters (in my opinion) they are all just W575-1 UNLESS the player was only made by the Koesters Company--

Provenance can be tricky, I can already see people buying up any and all Yankee & Giants W575-1 cards and sending them to the same grading companies and having them all encapsulated as Koesters. I don't really care whether the card was made by Koesters or not, if one can't tell by looking at it on it's own merits it shouldn't be encapsulated as such.

-Rhett

[nolemmings]

Rhett, can you verify that all of the w575-1s carry the exact same caption as Koester's except for what you call the exclusive cards, i.e. typeset and text are identical?

[rhettyeakley]

Todd, there are actually a few that have some slight variations but I am not ready to out these yet as I need to do more research to confirm my theory. That being said, the VAST majority (roughly 75%) of "Koester's" cards are simply W575-1 cards--one would not be able to tell one from the other (thus in my opinion they are the same thing).
-Rhett

I just wanted to add: To me it would be analogous to making a distinction between a regular Tom Barker game card a card that came out of the Fenway Brewery set. The only cards in the Fenway Brewery set that are any different are the Baker and the Scorecard/Instructions have had the red overprints on them. Any cards other than Baker and the Scorecard by themselves one would never be able to tell which "set" they originated from--thus they are the same thing (at least in my eyes).

[rhettyeakley]

Another way to think about these cards is this... we know that W575-1's were produced and distributed by many different outfits. I have seen many with caramel/candy stains and not to mention Henry Johnson & James Keating cards are simply W575-1's w/ their own rubber stamp on back. Thus, Koester's Bread was just another producer of the W575-1's--the only distinction is that we have surviving ads from Koesters and they decided to add a few players that were going to be playing in the World Series along with the already designed NY Giants and Yankees players that had been distributed via American Caramel, Gassler's, Haffner's, Witmor Candy, Clark's Bread, etc. along wth the other anonymous manufacturer cards (what we call W575-1). In other words since they already had many players' cards designed for these earlier promotions they added a few new guys to make the set the size they wanted consisting of only Giants and Yankee players.
-Rhett

[Leon]

Personally I always go by Burdick on this series, and anything except that which is specified in the ACC with a number, gets my designation of W575/1- D/Unc Gasslers (or whatever back it is). That way it specifies what type of card it is, a group class and the brand. What more can a guy want?

[steve B]

Just a thought. Given the way printing was done then, It's unlikely the cards from a koesters sheet are exactly identical to W575s having come from a different printing plate. The key being "exactly". It's probable that there are tiny differences in the screening or dot pattern between the two sets. Inconsequential differences for most purposes, but still different enough to tell. If I owned any I'd do some 800 dpi scans and then I'd know for sure.

Steve

[DanP]

Steve, I have 2 Koester's cards (Burkett and Youngs) coming. I'd be willing to scan them at 800dpi and send you the images. However, I don't own any 575's. Maybe someone else could do the same? Dan

[prewarsports]

It is more likely that the same company that printed the W575 cards also printed the cards to be distributed by Koesters so the same screens, stock, ink and images were almost certainly used. There could be some differences in the printing, but it is likely that unless new poses or positions were used, the cards are probably as identical as other cards from the series with identical fronts and just different backs.

Rhett is the walking encyclopedia on this stuff and his knowledge on these sets is really unbelievable (especially since it is ALL from memory and he does not use Price Guides or other peoples research and catalogs) so I am not speaking for him. That is just my understanding on how these cards were made.

Rhys

[rhettyeakley]

What you have to remember about all these E121-like sets is that they are very much like the T205 or T206 set (or even the M101-4/5 or E135/H801-8 family of sets), but for some reason we don't think of them like that. As in those sets, there are many different backs... all of which were produced by the same people but the difference lies in what is (or isn't) printed on the backs. It would make more sense for the printing company to use the image/card they had already designed for say Dave Bancroft for example than to design a brand new image or change anything for a new client (in this case Koester's). For players they hadn't already made yet the image was designed from scratch and those are the exclusive cards I was talking about. I am really close to developing a rough time line for most of the E121-like backs. These Koesters cards were produced in 1921, after the initial printing of the E121 Series of 80 set, but before the Series of 120 which was a 1922 production. These sets began w/ the first series of Holsum Bread cards (a 1920 issue) and ended with the later printings of E121 series of 120 and the W501 set-- so from 1920 to late 1922.
-Rhett

[nolemmings]

Has anyone seen a full gallery of the e121 series of 80? I would be very interested in knowing how many of the "old" photos are contained in the set--those taken from e135 and its ilk.

My initial thought years ago was that e120-80 was originally supposed to be just a group of recycled e135s with new team or position changes. Thinking it would be better to revamp, American Caramel then decided to add players who weren't around in 1917, along with updated photos for some of the more prominent players. What was puzzling was that the company clearly thought of issuing another, 120 card set, and did so within about a year, so why not wait instead of employing the more ad hoc approach of changing cards in e121-80, especially when many were just minor text changes? Sadly, I never got into the set to see where the research might take me on that.

All in all, my SCD book shows 136 different cards for this 80 card set. I wonder how many of these are the old photos and how many are not. Any facts, opinions or guesstimates are welcome.

[steve B]

It would really depend on the exact printing process used

As I understand it, the Koesters have a few cards that are only Koesters and that sheets were available, maybe as a premium?

The cards look lithographed, and the way that much lithography was done pre-computer is that the original art was photographed, and the "negative" (Actually a positive image) Was taped to a mask, which made a full plate size sheet with transparencies on it. This was used to make the printing plate, also by a photographic process. Since the Koesters had special cards, and only certain other cards from W575 they would have made a new plate. In most cases this would have been done with a new mask. And that's where the differences would happen. Since the old mask would still be needed to make plates for standard W575s It would be saved.
New photos would be taken, and a new mask made for the Koesters plate. It's nearly impossible to get the screen lined up exactly the same twice in a row, and I can pretty much guarantee that the guy doing the pictures wouldn't have even considered trying. His job was to take the pictures and to do it well and quickly.
Now bear in mind that It's really tiny differences we'd be talking about, Like in a particular row is it 3 dots between the border and an object, or is it more like half a dot two complete dots then another half dot. Or are the lines of dots at a 45 degree angle or at 50degrees. Not enough to matter to nearly anyone, but still a difference you could find.

There are other printing methods, and some of them would have a similar process, for others with a somewhat different process there might not be a difference. For typography there probably would be no difference since there would be actual blocks made for each card, and the W575 blocks would be reused.

This is one of the things That for me has crossed over from stamp collecting. There sometimes the printing method gets to be very important telling which stamp it is, and if it's real. Lithography, typography, and engraving have very different characteristics, and if it was printed by typography, but has litho characteristics then it's fake. And the tiny differences actually matter. 5 dots on Washingtons nose $100. 7 dots .20 (Not actual details, but you get the idea)

I'd love to see nice detailed scans either way, I think theres a good deal to be learned from them.

Steve