E123 Curtis Ireland Candy

[Leon]

Originally Posted by kmac32

I was wondering what the prevalence of certain individual players are in the Curtis Ireland candy set and how common are the cards. I understand that in theory, all players in the V100 Willard's Chocolate set should exist in Curtis Ireland. However I was reading last night that the cards were issued in increments and that the complete set may not have been issued. Also cards that were turned in to the company for the prize were to have been stamped as used and returned to the senders after the contest. Has anyone ever seen a cancelled card? Does anyone have a list of the cards actually issued? I have seen a few individual cards here and there. Nobody has ever discussed owning a complete set. Comments?

This is one of those sets that is too scarce for it's own good. I haven't heard about them being issued in increments but it's certainly feasible. I have probably seen close to 100 of these cards and haven't seen any that I could tell were canceled. That too wouldn't surprise me though. I am not sure a positive ID'd list is out there but there may be. I don't know of a complete set either but there could be one. This is a set that probably has more questions than answers, so far. I do know that Curtis Ireland was a St. Louis candy company and they did do quite a bit of advertising as the boxes and ads do pop up from time to time. It took me a while when I first started, to get my first one, but then more have shown up and I don't consider them "rare" but do consider them "scarce". I believe there was an Ireland's Candy and then sometime after that "Curtis" became involved. So many other things to research this is not one I have done much on (yet). It should be noted too that Burdick or Egan NEVER cataloged these. It was Bert Randolph Sugar that did it in his Sports Collectors Bible series.

[kmac32]

Leon,

Nice card and interesting on the Curtis company. Some of the reading said that Curtis was eventually bought up by Nestlé. I also read that Curtis was the manufacturer of Baby Ruth and Butterfinger. Those eventually became Nestlé products. On the subject of cards, did you ever actually see an Elmer Miller E 123 card?

[Leon]

Hi Ken
I don't remember if I have seen an Elmer Miller card or not. LL

[kmac32]

Never hurts to ask to see if the card even exists. Figured that somebody on the board might know in my quest to collect as many variations of Miller.

[brianp-beme]

No Miller info, but about 3-4 years ago Lew Lipset had quite a few in one of his auctions. I don't remember the exact amount, but he had several lots with perhaps 30 to 40 total different cards? I remember being impressed by the quantity, as normally you only see these individually or in very small groupings.

Brian

[ctownboy]

I have told this story before but here it is again.

Back in the mid-1990's, I found a stack of cards at an antique show. The dealer was from St Louis and the stack consisted of American Caramel and Curtis Ireland cards. There were about 20 Curtis Ireland cards including a Ty Cobb with a vertical crease down the middle of the card and at least 30 or more of the caramel cards.

The dealer wanted $1200 for the stack of cards and didn't really want to break them up and sell them separately. Being that I was just out of college, had just started a new job and had bills to pay, I couldn't afford those cards (and my parents wouldn't loan me ANY money for cards because they were afraid I would have to also hit them up for a loan to pay some bills). Anyway, I told a long time collector (who was my mentor at the time) about the cards and he came to the antique show, looked through the stack of cards and put 10 $100 dollar bills on the table and told the dealer to take it or leave it. The dealer looked through the cards, looked at the money, looked around and then agreed to the deal.

My mentor gave me a common American Caramel card and a Curtis Ireland card of E. H Sheely as a finders fee and kept the rest for himself. Later, as he was downsizing his collection, he kept a St Louis card for himself (he is a HUGE Cardinals fan) and consigned the cards to Lipset to auction.

As far as I know and from what I have been told, "my" find was and still is the largest group of Curtis Ireland cards known. That find is also one of the things that I regret missing out on as far as collecting goes.

David

[kmac32]

David,

Great story!!!