Track and field cards

[epike3]

What a great thread!

Let me start by adding a few E229 sheet cuts. Not sure that will tell us anything new about what the full sheet looked like .... would be interested to learn more about how that set was produced and the dimensions of a full sheet if anyone has info on that.

Also have one "So Cripso" back from this set, only one I have seen or heard of. I wonder if the set was produced primarily for National Licorice and the manufacturer wanted to make a few more $$$ by offering to also print the cards to whomever they could find that was willing to pay to print with their back logo; and perhaps even the manufacturer offered to produce them for distribution with blank backs.

-Ed

[G1911]

Originally Posted by epike3

What a great thread!

Let me start by adding a few E229 sheet cuts. Not sure that will tell us anything new about what the full sheet looked like .... would be interested to learn more about how that set was produced and the dimensions of a full sheet if anyone has info on that.

Also have one "So Cripso" back from this set, only one I have seen or heard of. I wonder if the set was produced primarily for National Licorice and the manufacturer wanted to make a few more $$$ by offering to also print the cards to whomever they could find that was willing to pay to print with their back logo; and perhaps even the manufacturer offered to produce them for distribution with blank backs.

-Ed

Nice to see where some of the other panels ended up. I regret not going for them as hard as I did the T220's from that same find after the seller finally clued on but that managed to screw up the second sale batch for his consigner too.

I think I can help with some of this.

The size is not solved, but we probably just came closer to figuring it out as I have what must be a lot of the far left column of the sheet. I anticipate it is larger than people expected sheets of this period to be before the find, and similar to the T220 massive sheet. Looks like your top 2 panels clearly fit together and go above my left side column panels. Does the third one you have, the bottom one in your pic, line up exactly with the bottom cut of panel #2?

At absolute minimum, there are 18 cards per column.

This set was almost certainly printed by Brett Lithography. The panels were found in the New York area alongside a 92% complete set of panels that constitute the T220 Silver border set, and then sold for pennies on the dollar by being falsely listed as reprints by an antiques shop that declined to discuss what they actually had and refused contact. Feel bad for their client who brought them in, they got hosed. One of the T220 panels has a stamp on the back with the date and printer. This set of panels from the same find is presumably from the same printer; something an employee brought home at some point. Both sheets have significant evidence of being pinned to a wall before they were cut into sections.

Brett Lithography was a partner of the ATC. A ledger/journal/notebook from their lead project manager, Frank Fullgraff, is also known to survive though only a ew pages of its contents have been made public. It appears to me that Brett Lithogrpahy is likely a clandestine subsidiary of the American Lithographic Company. Some monopolies divided themselves and tried to keep their corporate holdings a secret as the state cracked down with the Sherman Act. The evidence is circumstantial, but we have found a sizable body of circumstantial evidence that Brett operated under the auspices of the ALC.

It was discovered that National Licorice is an ATC owned product, just like most of the T cards. We have not found the document, if one even existed, but it appears clear that the ATC had an exclusive deal for the cards with the printing firms they sourced production too. The printing firms didn't just print, they independently ran much of the tobacco monopolies marketing and even designed and named brands for the ATC themselves. The odd thing with this set is that while E229 was actually an ATC card release, I have found no evidence connecting the other brand backs (Juergen's/Koesters/So Crispo) had any ties to the American Tobacco Company. Perhaps because this was not a tobacco issue, it was not technically covered by the exclusive agreement that we can deduce had to exist for the T cards. It is also possible this exclusivity was not a legal document but a handshake deal; the two companies were very very close and their owners good friends. I suspect Duke may have had a sizable secret stake in the lithographers.


I don't really collect this set specifically but So Crispo is definitely very rare; Burdick didn't seem to even know about them. This set is not 1920's like it is commonly listed but clearly c. 1910-1911. The blank backs cards that crop up from time to time are not proofs. The bread backs are pretty tough too, from what I have seen.

The discovery thread on the boxing forum has the results of most of the research included; dead ends, false trails, and material evidence all: https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=309276

[epike3]

Wow, fabulous post! I was wondering why some cuts had the left border but not others. Looks like my sheet without the border may fit lower right corner. I didn't anticipate that the sheet was so huge compared to most modern 132-card sheets. Love the backstory on the production process!

How many cards short of putting together a full sheet are we between these two groups of cuts?

Re: So Crispos, I have never seen a So Crispo back for sale; a friend knows I like track and field and kindly give one to me! I wouldn't be surprised if some other back(s) were made that didn't survive or are tucked away in a scrapbook somewhere esp. given how obscure this set is. Looks like the same blue ink for all of the back alternatives to National Licorice so maybe they were printed together in a different batch than National Licorice?

I also have owned, for many years, individual blank-backs of Ewry, Eller, Erickson, Gissing,Irons, Pilgrim, Smithson, Sheridan, Trubenbach. They are professionally cut, so guessing not from this sheet but sales person samples or distributed in very small numbers in products without advertising on the back of the cards. Though couldn't say for sure.

-Ed

[epike3]

back pixs

[G1911]

Originally Posted by epike3

Wow, fabulous post! I was wondering why some cuts had the left border but not others. Looks like my sheet without the border may fit lower right corner. I didn't anticipate that the sheet was so huge compared to most modern 132-card sheets. Love the backstory on the production process!

How many cards short of putting together a full sheet are we between these two groups of cuts?

Re: So Crispos, I have never seen a So Crispo back for sale; a friend knows I like track and field and kindly give one to me! I wouldn't be surprised if some other back(s) were made that didn't survive or are tucked away in a scrapbook somewhere esp. given how obscure this set is. Looks like the same blue ink for all of the back alternatives to National Licorice so maybe they were printed together in a different batch than National Licorice?

I also have owned, for many years, individual blank-backs of Ewry, Eller, Erickson, Gissing,Irons, Pilgrim, Smithson, Sheridan, Trubenbach. They are professionally cut, so guessing not from this sheet but sales person samples or distributed in very small numbers in products without advertising on the back of the cards. Though couldn't say for sure.

-Ed

I'm not sure how many panels shy we are; it's hard to know because the panels without left borders don't all fit together and I can't place a row across far enough to get an idea of the width. I suspect the right side of the sheet was more heavily damaged and not all of it was preserved. The T220 sheet (attached for size scaling, I know it's not track - there is one panel I do not own, and the bottom left and bottom right corners do not survive) measured 10 cards tall and 20 cards across and are much larger cards. That equals about 50 inches across and 33 inches tall, plus the white borders, making it a little over 52 inches across and 35 inches tall. This sheet may well be different, Brett could have and probably did produce sheets in different sizes for different sets. But it's an idea of the kind of thing this shop was producing at the same time for the same client.

The boxing sheet evidently survived in better condition than the track sheet before the point where it was cut up. There were some tears patched with tape in both groups; I suspect the cutting of the sheet was long ago but considerably after production. The boxing sheet is also a proofing sheet; the design is not quite finished. There is an error on one of the cards that was corrected before any real production ran and they are missing the metallic border. I believe no changes were made between the printing of this E229 sheet and the production press run. This is presumably a final proof sheet; there would be multiple sheets run as changes were made to finalize production. There was probably a T220-1 sheet after the surviving example we have here; I don't think there was for E229. The T220 sheet is dated September 13, 1910. The E229 sheet is probably right around this time, which lines up with the subjects, many of which we know had ATC card project contracts already from T218.

The sheet layout is so oddly random. Subjects aren't grouped together, with partial rows repeated seemingly in a random order. It's different from the evidence for all other ATC sets.

I believe the uncut sheet to be the final proof sheet for E229, rather than one of the other backs. I suspect E229 came first, utilizing the ATC contracts, and then the other backs were done by Brett Litho. either because this set was oddly not covered by the exclusivity deal or because Brett just chose to break it.

Thanks for the sharing the So Crispo, I've only seen like 2 or 3 of them in 20 years and neither was for sale. They've got to be very, very tough. I have some of the E229's and a single Koester's type card.

[epike3]

Interesting that you have seen a couple other So Crispo backs; so there are a few others out there! I am guessing there are not enough survivors to make a few set but probably that will forever remain an unsolved mystery .

I was wondering there were any changes between the ?E229? sheet and the regular cards but neither you I haven't spotted any - would love to see the Smithson card without his hand covered over by the printer!

[G1911]

Originally Posted by epike3

Interesting that you have seen a couple other So Crispo backs; so there are a few others out there! I am guessing there are not enough survivors to make a few set but probably that will forever remain an unsolved mystery .

I was wondering there were any changes between the ?E229? sheet and the regular cards but neither you I haven't spotted any - would love to see the Smithson card without his hand covered over by the printer!

It’s been a long time so I got out my notebooks. The So Crispo’s were 2 in number instead of 3, Flanagan and Trubenbach, that’s the names I recorded in my notebook. Gentleman who had them had a huge caramel and bread card collection (I don’t think he collected anything else), no attention to condition but just a really awesome accumulation of E and D cards with some really rare stuff I’d never seen before. He let me poke through his collection for a day and take notes. I don’t think I even knew So Crispo existed at all before that. He unfortunately passed away a couple years ago.


I would doubt there are 25 surviving So Crispo examples to make a full set. But then again, none of us would have predicted we’d find these sheets. A lot of the fun, for me at least, comes in these finds of unexpected material. Acquire them or not, it’s really cool to see what surfaces and what the next amazing discovery is. Maybe someone will uncover a box of So Crispo’s in a Scranton attic somewhere for us to marvel at. These must have been issued in incredibly small quantities originally.

Can I ask who is on the front of your So Crispo, just out of curiosity?

[epike3]

Sure, the So Crispo is Flanagan.