W503: Some old news with a new twist, and might as well show what you got!

[Leon]

Originally Posted by glchen

Here's my contribution.

Wonderful card, Gary. It is definitely not hand cut as the label says.
Since they don't know that I am not so sure they know what an alteration is either.

[brianp-beme]

Great card. Back around the turn of the century a Ruth with tape on the top border sold on Ebay for $100 just before I started noticing a seller's listings. A few months later the same came back on ebay from another seller and sold for around $150. I have always regretted not going after it.

It looks like the alteration is the old school pen marking to 'fill-in' the crease.

Brian

[glchen]

Originally Posted by Leon

Wonderful card, Gary. It is definitely not hand cut as the label says.
Since they don't know that I am not so sure they know what an alteration is either.

Originally Posted by brianp-beme

Great card. Back around the turn of the century a Ruth with tape on the top border sold on Ebay for $100 just before I started noticing a seller's listings. A few months later I came back on ebay and sold for around $150. I have always regretted not going after it.

It looks like the alteration is the old school pen marking to 'fill-in' the crease.

Brian

Thanks! Yep, the alteration is due to the recoloring of the crease. Still, I was waiting for this card to show up for sale for YEARS, and was very happy that I was able to add it to my collection even in this condition.

[HRBAKER]

Originally Posted by Leon

Wonderful card, Gary. It is definitely not hand cut as the label says.
Since they don't know that I am not so sure they know what an alteration is either.

It's just their "opinion" Leon.

[Exhibitman]

Damnit, Brian, now I have to get some of these!

[ValKehl]

Like Leon with his E90-1 Cy Young card, I won't pass up an opportunity to show this one again. If anyone has a WaJo in nicer condition, I'd love to see it.

[ullmandds]

i have not seen most of these poses...rare issue!!!!

thanks everyone for sharing!

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

i have not seen most of these poses...rare issue!!!!

thanks everyone for sharing!

I was thinking the same thing. These are not poses you see often, and I really like them!

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Damnit, Brian, now I have to get some of these!

Don't mean to pile on, but...

Brian (as Stengel snickers softly while he swings)

[brianp-beme]

No additional information since I originally created this thread five years ago, but just came across this when searching Google for W503 and figured that plenty of folks would enjoy its re-posting.

Brian (and a couple more cards from this great set)

[oaks1912]

Brian,
I missed this post from five years back. The W-503 cards are definitely a mis-categorized set, they should be an “E” card. This was one of John Spalding’s favorite sets to collect. The player selection, unique images, and challenge to complete were all contributing factors. Sometime in the 70’s / 80’s, John picked up a group of these cards from an original collector. The man indicated that he grew up in Oakland, California and bought them with slabs of caramel (similar to E-120/E-121 from the same era). As John continued to research the set, one of the sources indicated that he, too, remembered collecting them as a boy growing up in the St Louis area. That source was Buck Barker.


There was a group of them that turned up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 80's/ early 90's that all had a punch hole similar to the card in your initial post

While we still do not definitively know who the printer ,producer or marketer (s) were, we can say they were available in more than one metropolitan market.

Mark

[brianp-beme]

Hi Mark, always great to get your West Coast expertise. I have several W503 cards picked up over 20 years ago with scotch tape on front used to attach them into those old lined sticky photo albums from 1960's and 1970's (I showed a few of these cards on various of the previous posts) that also originated from an outside the hobby original collection from the Bay Area. Besides the W503, the only other cards the seller had were Zeenuts, so it seems (at least my mind thinks so) that the main distribution focus was likely the San Francisco Bay Area, but as Mark mentioned some other markets appear to have had some distribution as well. In any case fairly limited overall production of these great cards, based upon their relative scarcity.

Brian