Sets: How many really exist?

[Kenmarks]

I will take a shot at answering your question as I have tried to research this set over the years. Before getting started, wanted to throw a big shout-out to Tim for what he has accomplished towards building his Jell-O set in the very limited time since he started. And he is basically acquiring these cards in a card-by-card manner (as opposed to buying a large percentage of the cards at one time). In fact I know of no one who has made as much progress in putting the set together in the few months he has been at it.

So what makes this set so tough to put together. First there was a very limited distribution of the 1962 Jell-O cards when they were produced. It was a promotion that was a test to see the impact of cards on Jell-O product sales. As such, cards could only found in the Chicago/Milwaukee test area. And plans were that the promotion was to run for only 4 weeks. Thus very much different that the nationally distributed 1963 Jell-O cards in a lot of ways. All 197 players had cards that were issued on various packages of Jell-O gelatin. And some players also had cards on multiple gelatin flavors. But what the Jell-O folks also did in 1962 was to issue cards on 5 pudding flavors in addition to the gelatin flavors. Most of the stars appeared on one or more Jell-O pudding flavors (along with some "common" players). Because of these pudding box appearances, it is not hard to find most cards of the stars of the day as pudding was popular thus making more of certain players available (e.g. Mantle, Maris, Ford, Kaline, Cash, Fox, Aparicio, Killebrew, Snider, F. Robinson, Mays, Cepeda, Aaron, and Mathews were among the HOFers printed on pudding). There are probably around 64 players making appearances of pudding boxes with all of those players being not overly challenging to find.

So it is the remaining Jell-O gelatin cards only that have different degrees of difficulty in locating. And the cards that are really tough are the ones that were SOLELY printed on only one flavor of Jell-O that just did not sell that much. An example of one of those flavors is the small Black Raspberry Jell-O flavor. That is were the super tough cards of players like Maye, Spangler, Grammas, and Haddix were printed on.

One of the major issues from totally understanding the promotion is that there is not documentation that has ever been found that shows exactly which player cards came on each flavor and size of Jell-O (this exists for the 63 Jell-O set and all the Post Cereal BB/FB sets). As such, while there is a general understanding of which cards are tough and the level of difficulty of those cards, without a production list, it is very tough to tell why in terms of Jell-O gelatin flavors those cards appeared on. Some of us have started lists that try track which players appeared on which flavors of Jell-O, but with limited boxes and pictures of boxes available to see the flavor a player was on, those lists are probably far less than 50 percent complete. So I have likely rambled too much, but hopefully provided you a decent overview.

[Baseballcrazy62]

The 63 Jell-o set currently has 2 sets listed on the registry. Anyone want to venture a guess on how many exist?

[Promethius88]

Originally Posted by Kenmarks

I will take a shot at answering your question as I have tried to research this set over the years. Before getting started, wanted to throw a big shout-out to Tim for what he has accomplished towards building his Jell-O set in the very limited time since he started. And he is basically acquiring these cards in a card-by-card manner (as opposed to buying a large percentage of the cards at one time). In fact I know of no one who has made as much progress in putting the set together in the few months he has been at it.

So what makes this set so tough to put together. First there was a very limited distribution of the 1962 Jell-O cards when they were produced. It was a promotion that was a test to see the impact of cards on Jell-O product sales. As such, cards could only found in the Chicago/Milwaukee test area. And plans were that the promotion was to run for only 4 weeks. Thus very much different that the nationally distributed 1963 Jell-O cards in a lot of ways. All 197 players had cards that were issued on various packages of Jell-O gelatin. And some players also had cards on multiple gelatin flavors. But what the Jell-O folks also did in 1962 was to issue cards on 5 pudding flavors in addition to the gelatin flavors. Most of the stars appeared on one or more Jell-O pudding flavors (along with some "common" players). Because of these pudding box appearances, it is not hard to find most cards of the stars of the day as pudding was popular thus making more of certain players available (e.g. Mantle, Maris, Ford, Kaline, Cash, Fox, Aparicio, Killebrew, Snider, F. Robinson, Mays, Cepeda, Aaron, and Mathews were among the HOFers printed on pudding). There are probably around 64 players making appearances of pudding boxes with all of those players being not overly challenging to find.

So it is the remaining Jell-O gelatin cards only that have different degrees of difficulty in locating. And the cards that are really tough are the ones that were SOLELY printed on only one flavor of Jell-O that just did not sell that much. An example of one of those flavors is the small Black Raspberry Jell-O flavor. That is were the super tough cards of players like Maye, Spangler, Grammas, and Haddix were printed on.

One of the major issues from totally understanding the promotion is that there is not documentation that has ever been found that shows exactly which player cards came on each flavor and size of Jell-O (this exists for the 63 Jell-O set and all the Post Cereal BB/FB sets). As such, while there is a general understanding of which cards are tough and the level of difficulty of those cards, without a production list, it is very tough to tell why in terms of Jell-O gelatin flavors those cards appeared on. Some of us have started lists that try track which players appeared on which flavors of Jell-O, but with limited boxes and pictures of boxes available to see the flavor a player was on, those lists are probably far less than 50 percent complete. So I have likely rambled too much, but hopefully provided you a decent overview.

I haven't been out here actively reading in a couple weeks, so just catching up. Ken, thank you for the kind words. I consider you my mentor and one day hope to have a fraction of the collection of 62 Jell-O that you have, both quality and quantity.
What really prompted me to respond again was reading thru all the replies. This forum has some experts on many types of cards and you see a many responses and estimates of the pre-war sets referred to in the OP. The Jell-O just doesn't get the love it deserves. Albeit a post-war issue, the scarcity of this set is relatively overlooked. In comparison to the other sets noted, it most likely meets or exceeds the scarcity of the aforementioned sets in complete from. Then again, I'm just a post-war guy living in a pre-war world, lol! Great discussion guys!