Mystery Solved - Pinpointing the dates of W590 cards

Leon · #1 04-02-2014, 11:09 PM

Here is a better scan of the W590 sheet. It looks like at least the bottom is trimmed and maybe more.

glchen · #2 07-24-2015, 05:56 PM

I've been behind on this thread, so have wanted to update it in a while. First, a long, long time ago when this thread was still active, a board member pointed out that I had two of the W590 Cobbs where the fonts looked different. Therefore, I scanned them both on the same scanner side by side. The scan shows the font differences between the two (type 2 vs type 1) although it's not as easy to see in person. However, if you know about the font theory then you can see the differences.

glchen · #3 07-24-2015, 06:06 PM

Next thing to show are two Ross Youngs, which look like Type 1 and Type 3 according to the font theory, with the Type 3 being of the "Former" position variation for the card. The thing to see here is on the far left is the number "15" (cut off on one of the cards). This seems to show that this card was the first card on the 15th row of the sheet / page that this card was issued. Since both cards are on the same row / position, this supports the theory that new players / cards were not added to the set. Instead, for each year the set was issued, only the player's team or position was updated as needed. Therefore, each year should have the same number of player cards.

glchen · #4 07-24-2015, 06:17 PM

Finally, two new position / team variations have been uncovered, so I have added these to the checklist in post #2. They are:

Max Carey with the new position as Coach
Bob Meusel with the new team as Cincinnati

Note that the Carey should be a Type 3 according to the font theory, but the boldness and typeface are closer to Type 1.

paul · #5 07-25-2015, 07:25 PM

That Max Carey seems to really undermine the font theory.

vintagehofrookies · #6 07-26-2015, 02:08 PM

if one of those Cobbs was from 1931 wouldn't it say "former" or his last team which would be the A's?

glchen · #7 07-29-2015, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vintagehofrookies

if one of those Cobbs was from 1931 wouldn't it say "former" or his last team which would be the A's?

According to the font theory since both the player and team name are in bold, the year of issue should be around 1928/29. Therefore, there wouldn't be "former" on the card, but the team name should theoretically have changed to Philadelphia A.L. rather than continue to stay with Detroit.

Unfortunately, the one of the many things that we don't know with the set is how consistent the issuers were with correcting the team and name changes. Did they simply forget to make the changes for Cobb or is the bold/bold part of the font theory disproven? Unfortunately, all of the uncut strips and panels that we have seen so far are from the 1925 year. If we could see a 1931 uncut strip, that might greatly help in dating these cards. Also, if Ty Cobb cards with his team as Philadelphia and with "Former" do appear, then we would probably need to re-assess this part of the font theory. However, the 1931 cards are extremely rare, which is why two new variations to this set were just added in the last year. It's tough to say if and when they would come out. The other thing that has not yet been proven is whether all of the same players that were issued in 1925 were also remained in 1931. For example, for the players that retired, we have seen that "Former" is now added to the card. However, we have not seen all of the players that retired having "Former" cards yet. (e.g., Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, etc) Therefore, it is still possible that for these retired players, they did not have "Former" added to their card or their card in the set was swapped out with another player (e.g., a Roy Spencer).

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