Let’s rehash the Bond Bread controversy.

[Johnphotoman]

Thank you, I do appreciate your help with this thread. With all due respect I have a question for you. Butch, with your own proof, why do you question if the cards you have are not original? The letter you have says…”the most unique sets of baseball cards ever produced - 1947 Homogenized Bond set.”
“40-year-old cards”. "Every one of The 24 cards are in gem mint condition -exactly as they were printed more than 40 years ago.”

I notice there is no date on the letter, but if we go back 40 years from 1970-1980 we come to the years-1930-1940. Therefore the cards you have would be in those eras. Also your letter says, "The 1947 Homogenized Bond set, which was printed for only one year, contained 48 cards in all (44 baseball players and 4 boxers. We purchased the best of the set--24 cards in all---from the dealers's widow."

Therefore, you would have the 24 set card from 1947. Thanks again, John.

[Johnphotoman]

Here is a link to Bob Lemke's Blog - Saturday, April 16, 2011.
This page basically backs up the Baseball Card Society letter form above. Thanks to butchie t posting.

“The most recent information provided sheds some light on a variant of what the hobby knows as the "Bond Bread" issue of 1947. In reality, the New York baker was only one of several businesses that used a series of 44 baseball player cards and four boxers as promotions in the post-war era.

The genesis of the cards was a Chicago publisher, Aarco Playing Cards, that originally sold the cards in 1947 in boxed sets of 12 under the name Collectors & Traders Sports Star Subjects. The cards are black-and-white, blank-backed, 2-1/4" x 3-3/8" with rounded corners. Photos are borderless portraits or posed action shots with a facsimile autograph or script name.

That year, the N.Y. baker of Bond Bread evidently contracted with Aarco to obtain a quantity of the cards for distribution in loaves of bread. Later, for reasons unknown, square-cornered versions of half the cards in the set, printed on different card stock, were also produced.

Besides the boxed set and bread cards, much of the checklist of this set, along with at least one player that didn't appear in the original form, was used in a series of Exhibit-style larger-format cards and in a set of premium pictures in 6-5/8" x 9" format.

There was also a seldom-seen variant using the baseball/boxer pictures on one side, paired with Western movie stars on the backs. These were issued in perforated sheets.” (Bob Lemke's Blog). https://boblemke.blogspot.com/2011/0...ond-bread.html John.

[Exhibitman]

The "seldom seen variant"...seen

[butchie_t]

Originally Posted by Johnphotoman

Thank you, I do appreciate your help with this thread. With all due respect I have a question for you. Butch, with your own proof, why do you question if the cards you have are not original? The letter you have says…”the most unique sets of baseball cards ever produced - 1947 Homogenized Bond set.”
“40-year-old cards”. "Every one of The 24 cards are in gem mint condition -exactly as they were printed more than 40 years ago.”

I notice there is no date on the letter, but if we go back 40 years from 1970-1980 we come to the years-1930-1940. Therefore the cards you have would be in those eras. Also your letter says, "The 1947 Homogenized Bond set, which was printed for only one year, contained 48 cards in all (44 baseball players and 4 boxers. We purchased the best of the set--24 cards in all---from the dealers's widow."

Therefore, you would have the 24 set card from 1947. Thanks again, John.

John,

It all comes down to provenance. There is absolutely no way to tie these cards to a bread company or some other company that existed and printed them within the 47-48 timeframe. Someone that put that information in the letter to entice me to purchase even cannot or could not definitively state that these are actual Homogenized Bond Bread cards. He just claimed that they could be. At least that is what I have come to believe/understand now.

Now from a personal position I can see by comparing these cards to others within that time frame and much later, that they do compare themselves favorably to the earlier cards. But I am no expert and I have no other proof other than my hope.

Bottom line, until someone has enough gumption to actually do a serious amount of forensic work on these cards to actually place them in the 40's era, they remain a nice, somewhat expensive, novelty group of cards that I own.

I kept all the pertinent information from my purchase, including the invoice and the little tag that came with them. I can show my provenance but someone else has to do the gap tracking to actually get them to a documentable level that they can be cataloged as real.

Regards,

Butch

[Yoda]

John, are the blank backed '47 Bond Bread rounded corners insert cards any rarer than those with the bread ad reverse? Great recap on a sometimes confusing set.