What a find! 1916 M101-5 Chicago Examiner Sporting News Uncut Sheet

[nolemmings]

In addition to the team photos I mentioned earlier, which were available from shaving cream dealers, the Examiner did indeed offer the 200 Mendelsohn card set known as m101-5, for a three-month subscription. This is found on p. 15 of the Wednesday 4/5/16 edition--there is likely a similar ad two days later in the edition touting the National League players.

http://digital.chipublib.org/cdm4/cl...CALE=0&DMTEXT=

Curiously, the ad lists a few of the players included in the set and names Matty--who is of course not in the set at all. It also references "Joke" Tinker.

Finally and even more curiously, when the paper lists all AL players and their last year's records in the Wednesday edition, it includes the scarce Cady and omits Mordecai Brown, and Cady's pic is among those shown. Also, in the NL paper two days later, Beals Becker is listed and his pic shown. Thus two of the scarce variations were perhaps meant to be included, but not the third--Bobby Wallace. Either there were multiple printings of the m101-5 sheet to explain why yours does not have the variations, or maybe there had been some prototypes sent by Mendelsohn used for the ad but not used at the time of distribution.

Oops, I just saw Bobby Wallace's photo in the Examiner newspaper ad as well, although he and his 1915 stats are not listed.

[DJR]

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[barrysloate]

Holy sheet! That really is amazing.

[DJR]

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[nolemmings]

Thanks. Seems ike alot of space top to bottom--5 1/2 inches? Was it matted?

[DJR]

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[nolemmings]

Thanks alot!! I guess I never saw the "suitable for framing" language. Since Mendelsohn advertised sheets in a frame, without glass, this clearly did not come shipped from him. He didn't advertise non-framed sheets as such, although it seems logical he would sell them. Shipped rolled or flat--who knows?

There were a good dozen or more different ads in the Examiner for March and April. One showed Thorpe among others. Others listed Tinker as a shortstop when the card has him as mgr. One identifies Cobb as one of the cards you would receive, when he wasn't even in m101-5. But the most interesting was the first one you linked--it featured a "card" of Matty that never made the set, and it appears to be the same photo used in Mendelsohn's prototype or aborted set from 1917 (I'll have to review my notes). Great resource for sure--thanks again!!

[wolfdogg]

WOW.....nice......congrats

[JamesGallo]

Lets put aside the total shame it would be to cut this up but that being said do you guys really think there would be a lot of demand for these cards in an authentic hand cut type holder.

My understanding is that none of the grading companies will even slab cards cut from a sheet...

Perhaps you could get good money for a few of the big cards, but would someone put out 20K for a cut sheet ruth when they can get a factory cut one?

I don't think so. I think cutting it would be a shame and I think the seller would net less money over the long run, unless they had certain cards presold or convinced one of the grading companies to give grades to the cards.

James G

[ls7plus]

My bet would be six figures--$100,000+--based on rarity and significance, intact. Just saw that a Ruth M101 rookie went for just under $34K in PSA 3. The only downside to the sheet (which may not be a downside at all, given the relative ease of display framed and on a wall in the right collector's sports room/man cave) might be its unwieldly nature. Gidwitz used to be quite big on uncut sheets. Would be interesting to get his take on this one.

Wish David the best on a spectacular piece--I'm not usually an envious person, but wow!

Larry