A Chicle a day through the end of May

[jefferyepayne]

Card #9 in the Chicle set is Knute Rockne. Known for being one of the all-time great college coaches, Knute was a great player as well, winning All-American honors in 1913 at Notre Dame where he helped popularize the forward pass as a speedy end. More information on Knute can be found here: http://www.knuterockne.com/

Knute is the only non-NFL person in the 1935 National Chicle set, making may wonder whether the set was originally going to include college players as well. Note that the back of each card says it is "One of 240 football players" and only 36 cards were produced. Due to the size of the NFL in the mid 1930's it would have been nearly impossible to produce a 240 card set that included only NFL players.

Another theory is that National Chicle wanted kids to think there were more cards in the set to keep them purchasing the cards. This strategy was definitely employed in the 1930's (see discussions of the 1933 Goudey Nap Lajoie for more details). This seems unlikely due to the large difference between the number of cards produced vs. the number of cards the backs say are in the set.

Since the National Chicle Gum Company went bankrupt in 1937, it is likely that they had originally planned a set of 240 but ultimately could not afford to produce the complete set before running into financial problems.

Scan_Pic0002.jpg
rockne35back.jpg

You will note that the front and back scans of this card look different. It IS the same card. I'm just playing around with my scanner to make the images look better.

jeff