Babe Ruth General Gum Sign/Display - Black Light PIX added FINALLY

[bigfanNY]

Unfortunately we live in a time where forgers fake bats using old wood in a barn with old equipment. Faking paper is less expensive than faking wood. Old stock printed on an old machine and you have a license to print money.
In 1934 General Gum of Chicago issued a non sport set of "Funnies" the set was well documented. How likely is it that General Gum issues a series of 8x10's along with Baseball Gum and nobody picks up on it? The ACC , The Sports Collectors Bible, Sterling, Beckett/ Eckes, SCD. Nobody has a record. This is not some small Dog food outfit. This is a Large Candy Manufacturer in Chicago. And with the Dog food issue there were ads in local papers advertising the series. This is Chicago lots of papers lots of ads....any about this series?
And if it was found with a large collection of Yankee Letters and Contracts...Where are they?
How many red flags dose there have to be? How many signs hang in dens that are fantasy pieces printed on tin and aged. They usually come with a great story of how flea market sellers dad took it home from the local hardware store on main st. But Grandma left it out in the garage where it rusted...
it is just so so easy to find General gum non sports cards from 1934, it shouldn't be this hard to find a baseball issue from the same manufacturer.

[nolemmings]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

Unfortunately we live in a time where forgers fake bats using old wood in a barn with old equipment. Faking paper is less expensive than faking wood. Old stock printed on an old machine and you have a license to print money.
In 1934 General Gum of Chicago issued a non sport set of "Funnies" the set was well documented. How likely is it that General Gum issues a series of 8x10's along with Baseball Gum and nobody picks up on it? The ACC , The Sports Collectors Bible, Sterling, Beckett/ Eckes, SCD. Nobody has a record. This is not some small Dog food outfit. This is a Large Candy Manufacturer in Chicago. And with the Dog food issue there were ads in local papers advertising the series. This is Chicago lots of papers lots of ads....any about this series?
And if it was found with a large collection of Yankee Letters and Contracts...Where are they?
How many red flags dose there have to be? How many signs hang in dens that are fantasy pieces printed on tin and aged. They usually come with a great story of how flea market sellers dad took it home from the local hardware store on main st. But Grandma left it out in the garage where it rusted...
it is just so so easy to find General gum non sports cards from 1934, it shouldn't be this hard to find a baseball issue from the same manufacturer.

The lack of prior info or cataloging on the set is hardly determinative. How many sets remain unknown as to manufacturer still today? R315 and W517 are from the same era and yet their origins remain unsettled. M101-4 Sporting News were not known for more than 40 years after issuance, and Famous & Barr 15 years or so after that. New discoveries or clarifications are uncovered from time to time.

"How likely is it that General Gum issues a series of 8x10's along with Baseball Gum and nobody picks up on it?" Well, let's look at what are classified as P4 pins. Apparently, they were classified by Burdick as an anonymous issue, and so too in the Sports Collector's Bible. Yet for years they have been called Cracker Jack pins, and are still graded as such. But around ten years ago or so, an advertising poster surfaced that shows they were distributed with Button Gum, along with non-sports subjects. The manufacturer of Button Gum was General Gum, Inc. of Chicago-- the same outfit identified in the OP's display piece. Here's an OC story on the topic:
https://www.oldcardboard.com/eNews/2...eNews159.htm#2

So whether or not you consider it "likely", it has happened before.

[oldeboo]

The Button Gum connection is interesting as in pertains to General Gum and what has widely been referred to as Cracker Jack pins. A box topper pops up years later and all of a sudden the whole story of an item changes. Great sources in the hobby have been wrong from time to time due to simply not having enough information.

There are newspaper ads for General Gum products like "Funnies", "Button Gum", and "Movie Gum"? That would certainly say something about the marketing campaign of General Gum if all of those existed. It would be interesting to see those.

The seller does have a few letters listed from the Yankees that originated from the 1920's and appear to be genuine. Obviously there is no direct connection, but they could speak for storage conditions if they were in the same collection for many years. They are not in the greatest condition and exhibit staining as well. Of course different types of paper age in different ways, so even in similar storage conditions they won't look exactly the same. Does anyone believe that these items below could have been stored in a similar environment in the same collection for many years?

[RCMcKenzie]

If I walked into Hobby Lobby and saw a pillow with an image of a T207 Joe Jackson on it, and 2 years later, I saw a T207 Joe Jackson on eBay and was the winner, and David Cycleback said it was good to go, wouldn't that be crazy? No one thinks it's weird that the piece is already known outside the hobby as we debate on it?

[oldeboo]

Originally Posted by RCMcKenzie

If I walked into Hobby Lobby and saw a pillow with an image of a T207 Joe Jackson on it, and 2 years later, I saw a T207 Joe Jackson on eBay and was the winner, and David Cycleback said it was good to go, wouldn't that be crazy? No one thinks it's weird that the piece is already known outside the hobby as we debate on it?

That would be insanely crazy!

(To recap) Almost as crazy as an item that was sold by the truckload by a big box store and millions of people all over the country, both inside the hobby and outside the hobby, saw it, yet not a single person ever resold one, asked about it online, posted a picture of one of the many thousands of items sold by the store, or ever discussed it at all in any capacity. Not one person out of the millions ever said hmm what's the story here, not even someone outside the hobby that wanted to do a little research. Then one magically pops up in an online auction that is different than the only one that can be seen online. The only online image happens to be from a random person who saves images of very rare items and was the only one to have an image of the item that was only viewed 170 times, of which 95%+ were probably from here. Since then, a few mugs and shower curtains were probably ordered. On top of that, some people tend to think it's original to 1934! Some think it's the white whale from the big box store. Meanwhile, others think it was printed in a two car garage by some smooth fellow running a printing press and die press to make this one copy. The odds of even half of the above happening are so slim, but here we are.

This thread has been fun.

[bigfanNY]

Of course there are new items discovered in the Hobby all the time. One of the first copies of the scd I read discussed the Discovery of I think only the second 1948 Leaf Bob Feller.
But R315's and W517's were sold in strips and as singles by numerous small retailers. Many young collectors of the time grew to become lifeling Card collectors and remember them. Like strip issues of the 1920's wide distribution but no clear record of the original source.
All of the issues you discuss are in fact in the ACC and the catalogs that followed. But not Baseball Gum's series of 50... from General gum, in Chicago, in 1934 when their non sport issue was cataloged.
Although a number of the backs for issues similar to M104 were discovered later many were recorded early And most made it into the ACC.
Even p4 pins were recorded and in the catalog (How many Baseball pins have specific pedigrees vs large general issues like P10's ) And look at how many pins have been faked. With alot more effort than running off some small signs.
For the record I don’t belive that there was just one of these printed. Just takes an extra large pair to sell one on Ebay... gonna pop up like weeds at flea markets and Antique fairs. Where things like this are prevalent. And of couse we generally don't discuss fake / Fantasy signs here on Net54 main page, Better to discuss real baseball cards.

[nolemmings]

“All of the issues you discuss are in fact in the ACC and the catalogs that followed. But not Baseball Gum's series of 50... from General gum, in Chicago, in 1934 when their non sport issue was cataloged.”
The pictures ARE catalogued. As R310. They are simply not given attribution as being from more than one source.

You are of course free to believe what you will as to whether these pictures were distributed by General Gum, Inc. However, it remains as fact that the company issued black and white non-sport cards at or near the same time, and issued baseball player drawings on buttons/pins in 1933, showing they had both the wherewithal and interest to generate or participate in the sale of R310.

We KNOW that these same pictures (slightly smaller) were sold with gum, at least most of the same subjects, in Canada. We also know that the manner of sale is extremely similar to what we have here (picture plus one or two sticks of gum for a penny), and the verbiage used in the sales pitches was nearly identical. It is not a stretch by any means, IMHO, to conclude that a gum company in the U.S. could have had a hand in disbursing these same pictures here, particularly one like General Gum, which seems to have owned several sub-brands that made multiple varied attempts to reach kids through pop culture of the time.

I am going to keep an open mind on this. As stated, new discoveries appear periodically that help answer unsolved questions, although they can also raise new ones. It is also prudent to question hobby "knowledge" once in awhile, in the interests of getting it right. For example, why do we still call these 1933 gum buttons 1930 Cracker Jack pins? What evidence is there that Cracker Jack had anything to do with them? And why are V94s called Canadian Butterfinger? Just as a matter of convenience, like calling WWG cards Canadian Goudey? Was Butterfinger even produced or sold in Canada?

[CTDean]

Two sites on google mention the 1933-34 General Gum Babe Ruth box lid. Google "General Gum" "Babe Ruth" and scan down. I took a photo of the screen but couldn't get it to upload. Another obscure General Gum issue was R155 Trick cards. The issue had almost no background information until the Robert Edwards Spring 2009 auction. Lot 1532 was a box of 1933 General Gum "Mystery Gum" (no box lid) that brought $26,438.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by CTDean

Two sites on google mention the 1933-34 General Gum Babe Ruth box lid. Google "General Gum" "Babe Ruth" and scan down. I took a photo of the screen but couldn't get it to upload. Another obscure General Gum issue was R155 Trick cards. The issue had almost no background information until the Robert Edwards Spring 2009 auction. Lot 1532 was a box of 1933 General Gum "Mystery Gum" (no box lid) that brought $26,438.

I couldn't find them. How about some links?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by oldeboo

That would be insanely crazy!

(To recap) Almost as crazy as an item that was sold by the truckload by a big box store and millions of people all over the country, both inside the hobby and outside the hobby, saw it, yet not a single person ever resold one, asked about it online, posted a picture of one of the many thousands of items sold by the store, or ever discussed it at all in any capacity. Not one person out of the millions ever said hmm what's the story here, not even someone outside the hobby that wanted to do a little research. Then one magically pops up in an online auction that is different than the only one that can be seen online. The only online image happens to be from a random person who saves images of very rare items and was the only one to have an image of the item that was only viewed 170 times, of which 95%+ were probably from here. Since then, a few mugs and shower curtains were probably ordered. On top of that, some people tend to think it's original to 1934! Some think it's the white whale from the big box store. Meanwhile, others think it was printed in a two car garage by some smooth fellow running a printing press and die press to make this one copy. The odds of even half of the above happening are so slim, but here we are.

This thread has been fun.

Most of that might not be as unusual as you think.

Special cards and sets were made for the home shopping channels during the late 80's and early 90's. Nearly all of those are uncataloged and probably mostly forgotten.

Upper deck had a license for yugio cards in the late 90's, and counterfeited their own licensed product to sell to Treat Inc. The original article that covered it didn't include a list of which ones were made, just that they were rare foil ones and were different than the issued cards. Maybe there's a listing in some court document, but who is going looking for it?

Nearly all the unlicensed cards of the 80's-90s were never cataloged in any way.

I have a bike that was used to win a gold medal in a world championship in 1983. I've looked for around 20 years for a photo of the event with no luck at all. Not even a photo of any team, let alone the US team.
(the 1984 olympics TTT and 1986 world track championships team pursuit are almost as tough)

Do I think an ad piece for a promotion done in 1934 could have slipped through the cracks? It's possible.

[Jobu]

It is also possible that this sign was made and sent to Ruth, Walsh, or the team in hopes of convincing Ruth to sign off on a promotion that never happened - perhaps because of the bad blood mentioned. The staple holes/paper could have held a "take a look at this" sort of note.

This type of thing did happen, remember the awesome T206 Wagner strip proof found in Wagner's uniform pants in his attic.