1914 Cracker Jacks

[vthobby]

Can we dare say that 1914 CJs were the ultimate "test set" leading to all of the innovative changes in 1915 which were discussed earlier including albums, mail aways. etc...

mike

[KCRfan1]

The cards may have been distributed " nationally ", but I wonder what the definition of nationally was in 1914. National distribution in 2014 is coast to coast and boarder to boarder, and everywhere in between. In 1914, did national distribution really cover coast to coast, or was it to the Mississippi River from the east coast? How many people in LA, SF, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix ect. were snacking on CJ and pulling a card out of the box? I imagine very few were. The population base was east of the MS. River, and that IMO, would be the primary, if not all of the distribution of CJ.

[Bigb13]

This set is almost impossible to complete. I have been working on it for over 20 yrs. Out of the 144 I have 102 different ones with upgrades I have 175 1914's but missing 42 to complete the set.

[sniffy5]

Yep, I think most would agree that the CJ's in 1914 were distributed east of the Mississippi River. And that not many were available or even produced. And again, the 1914's are not really even cards. They were advertised as pictures, not cards, and really, as is known by anyone who has held one, they are really just paper. The company did not really seem to take the card promotion all that seriously, at least in 1914. But having said all that, the card backs do somewhat encourage kids to complete the set. Also, whoever did the art on the cards certainly took their jobs seriously, because most of the cards are really quite beautiful. Ironically, in 1915, when the company was a bit more into the baseball card thing, the cards added after #144 do not appear to be the works of art of 1914,IMHO..

[sniffy5]

Actually, the 1914 backs do actually refer to them as both "pictures" and "cards."

[Bigb13]

I see the new thing on EBay is stating very low pop. Under what number is low pop?

[sniffy5]

Well, the population reports of 1914's are a bit off due to unrecorded crossovers. The actual populations of graded cards is lower than what the sites say. The current eBay fad of listing 1914's under the moniker of "low pop" is in some cases true but at other times smacks of attempting to prey on naive buyers.

[Bigb13]

I still need 42 cards for a complete set tough as hell.