W516 copyright observation

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by Clutch-Hitter

That’s a great run! Good example of the white paper version of the -1-1, which is very similar to -1-2 paper. That one was mine previously; happy it made its way to your collection.

Greg, thanks for your kind words.

Has anyone ever seen a W516 WaJo with any portion of the "Universal ..." wording at the top of the card?

[Clutch-Hitter]

Going by memory, and what I have, the slogan is on cards numbers:

4-7
14-17
25-28

The others have to be spotted by image and paper type. My Becker #19 above is part of my other Beckers with the slogan.

[Exhibitman]

The analogous W529 issues have at least eight basic subsets, with even more
when color and font variations are considered, some or all of which may be the work of the same company.

W529-1 has handwritten captions at the bottoms of the cards and are numbered from 1-10. The “base” set described by Burdick.



--Type 1 cards can be found with the phrase “Universal Fighters Matching Cards” at the top over Tendler, Leonard and Fulton.



--Type 1 cards can be found on a polished white one-sided stock or the standard rough chip board.
So, we have Type 1-1, Type 1-2 and Type 1-3

W529-2 is the base set with the same numbers but the images reversed (the IFC copyright will be backwards on them).



W529-3 has the images reversed and the numbers in the opposite order of Type 1.



--Type 3 cards also can be found with the legends in blue italicized handwritten captions and blue borders on the cards.

Type 4: Same ten fighters and images with typeset captions at the card bottoms, numbered 50-59



Type 5: Same ten fighters and images with typeset captions at the card bottoms reversed images.



Type 4 and Type 5 have multiple ink color variations.




W529-6 and W529-7 are similar to the "Big Head" baseball cards. Type 6 has primary colors; Type 7 has pastel colors




W529-8 are the cards on that uncut sheet of baseball and boxing mixed subjects with the names in the image field and no numbers. It has only 6 boxers of the ten found on the others. Color combos vary.

[Spike]

I've studied these sets for several years, taking note of paper stock, ink quality, possible dating based on subjects, number sequences, IFC/IFS insignia, and UNIVERSAL text variations. Several observations came from this work.

Based on similarity to the design, paper stock, and card text of other paper toys made by Universal Toy & Novelty Manufacturing Company of Illinois, I believe that company released all 30 W516 baseball cards, ten W529 boxing cards, 20 Hollywood cards, ten W53 US presidents, and several other subjects that share the same general design for various distribution methods. They printed (at least) strip cards and notebooks based on available images.

Based on the "(C)IFC" or "(C)IFS" licensing of original images, I think Universal Toy started printing sheets of strip cards for Hollywood movies in 1919, soon added baseball and boxing, and expanded into more non-sport sets by 1921. The small globe logo seen on some notebook pages is Universal's own logo, with "Universal" printed on the banner.

William Randolph Hearst's media empire owned (or claimed to own) the licensing rights for many original images for Universal's boxing, Hollywood, and baseball strips, hence the ©IFS, ©IFC, or © that appear on those cards. Two images, Douglas Fairbanks (actor) and Johnny Dundee (boxer) also show the APEDA studio insignia. APEDA did similar photo licensing work in this era.

Turbulence in Hearst's IFS/IFC companies between 1919 and 1920 appear to have led Universal to drop its license attribution. I bet this move cut costs and reflects legal wrangling over image ownership in that era. W520 and W522 baseball sets, for example, appear to be part of larger, multi-subject Universal Toy strips printed in 1920-21 without any licensing. (They might've done this to test recent legal challenges to ownership of a licensed image.)

Print cutting was so poor on many strips that adjacent subjects from the same set or different sets tell us something about their print layout. Sheets for these sets were at least 20 cards wide (two ten-card strips) and perhaps wider. While it's unclear how _tall_ its print sheets were, I think they were at least ten strips high and perhaps taller.

In some cases, it appears Universal Toy printed multiple subjects on the same sheets. In others, they repeated the same subject over and over. I think the layout changed to fit the reason for each sheet. If a Hollywood publicist wanted cards for a movie promotion, they printed those Hollywood cards all at once. If Universal Toy needed something for their own boxes of paper toys, they printed several subjects on one sheet. This work met business needs of the moment and I doubt they thought about who would try to "collect" such cheap products.

Something about their printing process made it practical to print reversed images on some sheets, even when these reversals made baseball players change their dominant hand. Baseball, boxing, US Presidents, Hollywood, and other strips sets came with reversed, if otherwise identical, images. This led to interesting images like this backward strip of presidents (Harding at left, Washington at right) below the titles for a non-reversed 1921 Charlie Chaplin movie strip.

I'll post again soon with a matrix of card details to look for when sorting out these strip sets and their many subjects.

[Spike]

People asked about HOF variations earlier, as well as placement of title text on the strip and printing sheets.

1. The W516-1 version with title text has its own text alignment variations and one of them includes #24 Mathewson. Apologies to his player collectors!

2. Title text can appear multiple times on the same print sheet, above each strip. The boxer variations below show #6 Fulton's card has the "UNIVERSAL" title and another boxing strip _above_ it, so this appears to be a single sheet with repeated boxing strips. I think Universal Toy added their own text to compete against other strip card makers by confirming you were holding a Universal-made strip and (in 1921) adding copyright information to the end of their strips.

If you own cards that fill in the missing variations or have other interesting variations, please share scans!

[Clutch-Hitter]

Becker was a company, not an individual teacher. This makes much more sense.

https://www.shopbecker.com/about-us/

[ricktmd]

Here is a Speaker W516-1-2

[edhans]

Double post.

[edhans]

Originally Posted by Clutch-Hitter

Becker was a company, not an individual teacher. This makes much more sense.

Interesting, but raises more questions than it answers. The founder's name is Charles J. Becker, so the initials do not match. It could, I suppose, have been his wife. The site does not state an exact date when the company was founded, but alludes to "the early 1920s" which lines up with the issue date for W516-1. Most curious is why the "company" would hand write the reverses instead of stamping them. Who were they asking to save their tablet fronts? Were they marketing to teachers? schools? or to the kids directly? The mystery continues...