1949 Leaf Theory

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by yanks87

Fantastic, thank you Ted. Thank you for sharing first hand knowledge of when all the series hit. I will update my notes accordingly.

Did you ever get any of the premiums?

The pirate ring or the large format cards at the bottom of the baseball boxes?

Brian

I am guessing you are a Yankees fan ?
If so, you will appreciate this...when I was growing up, our home in Hillside, NJ was just 2 short blocks away from Phil Rizzuto's home. Phil was a really
great neighbor. I could devote several pages of stories regarding him. I knew Phil for many years.


Speaking about 1949 LEAF Premiums, here are some of mine......
Check-this-out, here are 2 graded examples which confirm that PSA and SGC do NOT understand the LEAF BB cards with respect to their "issued date".
These PREMIUMS were included in the same wax-pack boxes that the 1949 cards were in. And indeed, they are correctly identified with the 1949 date.
Yet, the individual 98 (and their variations) BB cards that are graded by PSA and SGC are INCORRECTLY identified as 1948, or 1948-1949 issue dates.


NOTE ----------------v 1949 v-----------------------------------------------------------------------------v 1949 v






TED Z

T206 Reference
.

[Rare Stuff]

Check out my video on the 49’ Leaf Premiums

https://youtu.be/A_AukMF8vpY

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by Rare Stuff

Check out my video on the 49’ Leaf Premiums

https://youtu.be/A_AukMF8vpY

AMAZING collection, I am BEYOND impressed and jealous. Thank you for sharing!

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by tedzan

Brian

I am guessing you are a Yankees fan ?
If so, you will appreciate this...when I was growing up, our home in Hillside, NJ was just 2 short blocks away from Phil Rizzuto's home. Phil was a really
great neighbor. I could devote several pages of stories regarding him. I knew Phil for many years.


Speaking about 1949 LEAF Premiums, here are some of mine......
Check-this-out, here are 2 graded examples which confirm that PSA and SGC do NOT understand the LEAF BB cards with respect to their "issued date".
These PREMIUMS were included in the same wax-pack boxes that the 1949 cards were in. And indeed, they are correctly identified with the 1949 date.
Yet, the individual 98 (and their variations) BB cards that are graded by PSA and SGC are INCORRECTLY identified as 1948, or 1948-1949 issue dates.


.

Ted - the premiums are fantastic, thank you for sharing. I am a Yankee fan and grew up listening to The Scooter on WPIX with Bill White. In many ways, their banter made me as much of a Yankee fan as the players on the field. His Hall of Fame induction speech is amazing, I can't even image the stories you have from living close to him. They don't make them like that anymore!

[tedzan]

Brian

Perhaps, I will thrill you with some of my Phil Rizzuto stories when I find the time.

Regarding, the BOWMAN lawsuit.....there are two stories to it. One factor deals with the Rights of the players.

The 2nd deals with the labeling on the BOWMAN and LEAF wax-packs wrappers. I will scan my two 1949 LEAF
BB wax-pack wrappers and post them tomorrow to show you the difference.

The BOWMAN lawsuit forced LEAF to modify their wrapper labeling quite fast. The wrappers containing the 2nd
Series cards (short-prints) issued in the Summer of 1949 are different.

I will post pictures tomorrow.


TED Z[/B]

T206 Reference
.

[steve B]

I've been working off and on doing a spreadsheet of 49 Leaf Images.

Hardly complete, and I still find new ones.
As things are now, I'm up to at least 4 different runs, maybe as high as 6.

The obvious Pink ones. these so far always have the sides to the portraits, or the lines across the ends of bats. On some cards it can be tough to spot.

The ones with lines across the bats and portraits, but with red instead of Pink.

With lines, but shaded or dark hats

Without the lines regular hats

Without lines Shaded hats.

That's all sort of preliminary. the hat shading may not be consistent, but I think it is.

Where the background does not make a line across a bat, the yellow extends to the edge, but the black does not. On ones with the lines, the yellow often doesn't extend to the edge, but I have seen at least one where it does.

Most of the easily recognizable color differences are consistent with only one version.

I believe the yellow backgrounds Like the Johnson here are a different printing where no blue was used to mix with yellow.


An amazingly complex set for just 50 cards. (I think of the rare numbers as their own set. )

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by steve B

I've been working off and on doing a spreadsheet of 49 Leaf Images.

Hardly complete, and I still find new ones.
As things are now, I'm up to at least 4 different runs, maybe as high as 6.

The obvious Pink ones. these so far always have the sides to the portraits, or the lines across the ends of bats. On some cards it can be tough to spot.

The ones with lines across the bats and portraits, but with red instead of Pink.

With lines, but shaded or dark hats

Without the lines regular hats

Without lines Shaded hats.

That's all sort of preliminary. the hat shading may not be consistent, but I think it is.

Where the background does not make a line across a bat, the yellow extends to the edge, but the black does not. On ones with the lines, the yellow often doesn't extend to the edge, but I have seen at least one where it does.

Most of the easily recognizable color differences are consistent with only one version.

I believe the yellow backgrounds Like the Johnson here are a different printing where no blue was used to mix with yellow.


An amazingly complex set for just 50 cards. (I think of the rare numbers as their own set. )

Great research. I feel like "we" (the collectors) need to come up with a designation for how best to characterize the print runs on these. The color variations are definite flags of different runs, as different inks were used. Then we have the actual plate changes, the recognized Peterson and Aberson variations actually extend to many more. Then there are the outliers.

My thought is that the plate changes represent a definite "variation" as there was a physical change made to the printing plate, though the rest of the card stayed the same. Those variations are measurable and not as subjective as the tints of the inks, though those tints are SUPER important in decoding how many different printing runs were made. The Rizzuto that you have shown has two changes made to it (outside of ink colors), the detail of his hat was removed making it blue, and the background red was extended to the nameplate. The only other player that I have found to get this treatment is Jackie Robinson, though the Babe Ruth card has a variation where the "background connector" is added, but the hat is untouched.

Complex is certainly the best way to characterize it, as I have gotten deeper into the research I have really started to enjoy the quirkiness of the cards, outside of their value in the hobby, but also representing a fascinating time in the game.

[steve B]

What I'm thinking of doing is assigning a number to the identifiable plates for each basic color. So like R1 and R2 to indicate a particular red plate as opposed to another.

But that ends up making the overall "number" for a card something like
card #3 - C1 R2 Y2 K2

Which is fine for a start but awkward, and there's no real idea which should be 1 or 2 - did the ones with the extra lines come first or second?

The pink ones - actual Magenta- would probably be something like R2P...

At least it would help group things.

Most cards with anything close to the border have diferences in that area. The lines next to portraits and across the end of bats. Hats get cut down in multiple colors, and often there are three different is the hat is cut down.
Normal hat
Hat cut down background normal
Hat and background cut down
(And probably ones with the background cut down but the hat normal.

It might be possible to limit how many intermediate types I have to look for, since the typical process is to print light to dark. So YMCK or YCMK. But I suspect Leaf didn't necessarily follow that. (Fleer star stickers in 81 were sometimes printed with the blue over the black, and T206s are known with just yellow and brown, so it's not really a hard rule.

[steve B]

There are a few where I haven't found a difference yet.

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by steve B

What I'm thinking of doing is assigning a number to the identifiable plates for each basic color. So like R1 and R2 to indicate a particular red plate as opposed to another.

But that ends up making the overall "number" for a card something like
card #3 - C1 R2 Y2 K2

Which is fine for a start but awkward, and there's no real idea which should be 1 or 2 - did the ones with the extra lines come first or second?

The pink ones - actual Magenta- would probably be something like R2P...

At least it would help group things.

Most cards with anything close to the border have diferences in that area. The lines next to portraits and across the end of bats. Hats get cut down in multiple colors, and often there are three different is the hat is cut down.
Normal hat
Hat cut down background normal
Hat and background cut down
(And probably ones with the background cut down but the hat normal.

It might be possible to limit how many intermediate types I have to look for, since the typical process is to print light to dark. So YMCK or YCMK. But I suspect Leaf didn't necessarily follow that. (Fleer star stickers in 81 were sometimes printed with the blue over the black, and T206s are known with just yellow and brown, so it's not really a hard rule.

I'm thinking the removal of details and addition of lines happened second. A smaller run, they represent about 34-36% of the population using the Peterson and Aberson as a guide. Hermanski is an oddity, I see that more as a inking error, but the population falls in line with the percentages, and I have seen that variation in the Magenta color way, but WHY would they change it to the wrong name, makes no sense.

Still a barrel of nuts to crack on this one.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by yanks87

Great research. I feel like "we" (the collectors) need to come up with a designation for how best to characterize the print runs on these. The color variations are definite flags of different runs, as different inks were used. Then we have the actual plate changes, the recognized Peterson and Aberson variations actually extend to many more. Then there are the outliers.

My thought is that the plate changes represent a definite "variation" as there was a physical change made to the printing plate, though the rest of the card stayed the same. Those variations are measurable and not as subjective as the tints of the inks, though those tints are SUPER important in decoding how many different printing runs were made. The Rizzuto that you have shown has two changes made to it (outside of ink colors), the detail of his hat was removed making it blue, and the background red was extended to the nameplate. The only other player that I have found to get this treatment is Jackie Robinson, though the Babe Ruth card has a variation where the "background connector" is added, but the hat is untouched.

Complex is certainly the best way to characterize it, as I have gotten deeper into the research I have really started to enjoy the quirkiness of the cards, outside of their value in the hobby, but also representing a fascinating time in the game.

I'm not very versed on the Leaf set but I do do a lot of research on variations in different sets so I picked the Jensen (Jansen) card to do some research on and I came up
with as many as 4 possible variations with 2 color variations for for each one of them for a total of 8 possible variations for each subject on the first series sheet.

On the background color variations I think it has more to do with a difference in cardstock than it does the the actual ink color used. On the pink or
pinkish variations the fronts seem to be a whiter stock and it also feels thicker to me.

I researched 386 Jensen cards and here's what I found

This is the first variation and by far the most common with 236 or 61.13% of the Jensen's I checked.

This variation has no white above the hat and they all have a round black dot in the J

The one on the right has a pinkish hue in hand but for some reason it looks more orange in my scan

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]


The next variation has a big white area above his hat and this is the variation that has all of the pink variations in it. There were 62 of the 386 or 16.06% of this variation
and 25-30% were pink or around 5% of the 386. I also think this is the variation on the sheet Ted posted.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

The next variation has a smaller white area above his hat and is the least common with 28 or 6.99% of the 386.

The one on the right is also pinker in hand than it is in the scan
[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

the Last variation has no white above his hat and no black dot in the J there were 60 or 15.54% of the 386 of this variation.

I don't have the two variations of this one yet.

[IMG][/IMG]

[steve B]

I think the stock differences do affect the color of the red a bit.

I hadn't started doing the stock differences, as I've concentrated on the large variety of differences on the fronts.

Of the ones Pat has posted, the last one is the only one I didn't have an image of.

Up close, do any of them show yellow anywhere? Having or not having the yellow could affect how the red seems too.


One thing I like is the images of the edges. You can see the diagonal lines where the cutting blade had tiny nicks.

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by tedzan

Brian

Regarding, the BOWMAN lawsuit.....there are two stories to it. One factor deals with the Rights of the players.

The 2nd deals with the labeling on the BOWMAN and LEAF wax-packs wrappers. I will scan my two 1949 LEAF
BB wax-pack wrappers and post them tomorrow to show you the difference.

The BOWMAN lawsuit forced LEAF to modify their wrapper labeling quite fast. The wrappers containing the 2nd
Series cards (short-prints) issued in the Summer of 1949 are different.

Hi Brian

This illustrates the above stated 2nd lawsuit (BOWMAN vs LEAF) regarding the use of the wording " BASEBALL BUBBLE GUM "
on the wax-pack wrapper. BOWMAN claimed they owned the Copyright for that term. So, LEAF removed the word " BASEBALL "
from their wax-pack wrapper when they issued their 2nd Series of cards in the Summer of 1949.


1949 BOWMAN ------------------------------------------ 1949 LEAF 1st Series -------------------------- 1949 LEAF 2nd Series



TED Z

T206 Reference
.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by tedzan

Hi Brian

This illustrates the above stated 2nd lawsuit (BOWMAN vs LEAF) regarding the use of the wording " BASEBALL BUBBLE GUM "
on the wax-pack wrapper. BOWMAN claimed they owned the Copyright for that term. So, LEAF removed the word " BASEBALL "
from their wax-pack wrapper when they issued their 2nd Series of cards in the Summer of 1949.


1949 BOWMAN ------------------------------------------ 1949 LEAF 1st Series -------------------------- 1949 LEAF 2nd Series



TED Z

T206 Reference
.

Isn't the last wrapper a football wrapper?

[Rad_Hazard]

Interesting thread on an interesting set.

When I read the title I originally thought "what a great college course!".

1949 Leaf Theory - 3 Credits - Spring Semester

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by Rad_Hazard

Interesting thread on an interesting set.

When I read the title I originally thought "what a great college course!".

1949 Leaf Theory - 3 Credits - Spring Semester

Agreed! I’ve been in full study mode this entire semester!

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by Pat R

Isn't the last wrapper a football wrapper?

The wax-pack wrappers of Al Rosen's unopened find of 1949 LEAF Baseball (2nd Series, 596-cards) find, in Tampa (Florida) in 1989 were labelled "ALL
STAR Pictures".

Incidentally....Although these cards were acquired in Florida, the original provenance of this collection was the Detroit area in Michigan.
This fact sounds like another Florida acquisition that has been debated on Net54, whose provenance was originally in the northern U.S.

The Football wrappers were labelled ALL-STAR FOOTBALL in 1948. In 1949, it is my understanding that they may have been labelled " FOOTBALL ",
or " PICTURES ".


In the Fall of 1948, LEAF issued their ALL-STAR FOOTBALL GUM set comprising of 98 cards. Issued in two 49-card series. Jackie Jensen's rookie card
is in the tougher Hi # series. A great FB and BB athlete, Jackie decided in favor of Baseball when he signed with the Oakland Oaks PCL team in 1949.





ALL-STAR FOOTBALL GUM issued in 1949 (49 cards).



TED Z

T206 Reference
.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by tedzan

Incidentally....Although these cards were acquired in Florida, the original provenance of this collection was the Detroit area in Michigan.
This fact sounds like another Florida acquisition that has been debated on Net54, whose provenance was originally in the northern U.S.

.

We are still eagerly awaiting that evidence from your research that the T206 ‘sheet’ was discovered in New York, not Florida, since you’re bringing it up.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by tedzan

The wax-pack wrappers of Al Rosen's unopened find of 1949 LEAF Baseball (2nd Series, 596-cards) find, in Tampa (Florida) in 1989 were labelled "ALL
STAR Pictures".

Incidentally....Although these cards were acquired in Florida, the original provenance of this collection was the Detroit area in Michigan.
This fact sounds like another Florida acquisition that has been debated on Net54, whose provenance was originally in the northern U.S.

The Football wrappers were labelled ALL-STAR FOOTBALL in 1948. In 1949, it is my understanding that they may have been labelled " FOOTBALL ",
or " PICTURES ".


In the Fall of 1948, LEAF issued their ALL-STAR FOOTBALL GUM set comprising of 98 cards. Issued in two 49-card series. Jackie Jensen's rookie card
is in the tougher Hi # series. A great FB and BB athlete, Jackie decided in favor of Baseball when he signed with the Oakland Oaks PCL team in 1949.





ALL-STAR FOOTBALL GUM issued in 1949 (49 cards).



TED Z

T206 Reference
.

There are several facts that show that the third wrapper is a Leaf football Wrapper and not a baseball wrapper.

1. I don't think the wording on the Leaf Wrapper was an issue with bowman it wasn't even mentioned in the article I posted about the court hearing.

2. Even if it was an issue I don't think they could have done anything about it based on the court information from when Bowman sued Topps.
But the term "baseball" is not subject to monopolistic appropriation by the plaintiff. The term is generic and descriptive; nor is there any proof that as used by the plaintiff it acquired secondary significance as indicating the source or origin of the gum sold. Nor is there any secondary significance arising from the designation of the product in connection with the name of any famous player. The case might be different if the plaintiffs were selling a product under the designation of some one name. Such use might readily build up good will, and an invasion on the part of one not privileged to use the name would be subject to restraint. In the circumstances of this case though, we have no such situation. On the contrary, the facts and applicable law fall readily within such authorities as Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 305 U.S. 111, 59 S. Ct. 109, 113, 83 L. Ed. 73, in which it was held that *948 "Shredded Wheat" was a generic term, not subject to exclusive appropriation by the original maker of the product. The court said:

3. The wrappers in the 2nd series Rosen find say "All Star Baseball Bubble Gum"
[IMG][/IMG]
https://bid.robertedwardauctions.com...e?itemid=44356


and an August 18 1949 ad about packages of Leaf Baseball cards that they were giving out specifically states "a package of Baseball Bubble Gum".

img218.jpg


This older thread that no longer has the images has a discussion on the 1949 football packs https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...highlight=Leaf