1949 Leaf Theory

[steve B]

Originally Posted by yanks87

Ted, not questioning your experience, provenance or otherwise, I think it is vital to composing the "full story", I am just trying to crack the code of why and when the changes were made to the cards. The pictures, population reports and anecdotes are all we have to go off of, so there is still some mystery to the 1949 Leaf set.

I'm heading to Chicago this spring to check out items from the Leaf estate, hopefully this will help to round out the story starting where they were produced in Chicago. I hope that I will be able to connect what I find there with your reporting and somewhere in between we can get a clearer picture of how they rolled off the presses and if it was the lackluster sales or a new art director that lead to the changes that were made.

No mystery in your stories, those are solid, but there are still some things left to figure out about this set/brand.

Thanks again for all the replies!

To me the why is the puzzle.
Boxing and Football don't have as many differences in the printing, and If I'm not messing up the timeline came out before Baseball.

My general feeling was that it wasn't poor sales, but much better than expected sales.
The shop I worked for saved the masks used to make the plates for a long time. Some for years. At least until the Hunts drove silver up... Anyway, we could have easily reprinted many jobs exactly the same as earlier.

But if Leaf printed to their expected sales, and threw out the masks, those would have to be redone.
The other possibility would be responding to complaints, like "who wants a PINK baseball card!"
Or having another place do more cards when needed.
Or... if the ones with the lines came first, eliminating the lines would make the job cheaper as it uses less ink. That little difference may not seem like a lot, but over a lot of sheets it adds up.

[steve B]

Ted, did you get many of the pink ones, and do you recall if they were early or came later?

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by steve B

To me the why is the puzzle.
Boxing and Football don't have as many differences in the printing, and If I'm not messing up the timeline came out before Baseball.

My general feeling was that it wasn't poor sales, but much better than expected sales
The shop I worked for saved the masks used to make the plates for a long time. Some for years. At least until the Hunts drove silver up... Anyway, we could have easily reprinted many jobs exactly the same as earlier.

But if Leaf printed to their expected sales, and threw out the masks, those would have to be redone.
The other possibility would be responding to complaints, like "who wants a PINK baseball card!"
Or having another place do more cards when needed.
Or... if the ones with the lines came first, eliminating the lines would make the job cheaper as it uses less ink. That little difference may not seem like a lot, but over a lot of sheets it adds up.

Hi Steve

I am one of the few guys (or probably the only guy) left on Net54 that collected the 1948 thru 1949 LEAF cards (Pirates, Boxers, BB, and FB).
I kept the Baseball and Boxing cards. But, sold most of my Pirates and Football cards.

You are correct....LEAF did not expect how popular these cards would be (especially their Sportscards). For example, the 1948 Boxers were so popular, Leaf continued printing
them into 1949 (check out the Tony Zale examples).


1948 issue .................................................. ....... 1949 issue






This BB set has one of the highest ratios of HOFers/Subjects (20/98) than most BB sets. Of the 20 - HOFers in the 1949 LEAF set, the Indians lead with these 5 - HOFers:
Spring series cards

.



Summer series cards (short-prints)

....



LEAF's Quality Control left a lot to be desired..... as you and I know from having traded and compared our numerous color variations. For example......

And then, there is BLUE or no BLUE.

I had a near mint Jackie Jensen with a white background (like the above Mizell Platt.card). I regret selling it years ago.




TED Z

T206 Reference
.