M101-5 vs. M101-4

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Posted By: Andy Baran

Todd,

That is interesting information, and it sounds like you may have more to share at a later date. However, I don't believe that the fact that there are no ads for M101-5 in The Sporting News is any indication that M101-5's were not already in distribution. We have determined that the majority of Famous & Barr cards are from the M101-5 series. There is no reason to believe that they would have chosen to place an ad for these cards in the Sporting News.

Here is another theory: Perhaps Mendohlson originally only planned to sell the cards to companies like Famous & Barr, but when the M101-5 Famous & Barr cards were a success, they decided to sell their blank back cards direct to collectors. If they were already producing M101-4's at that time, it would make sense that they would use these cards in their Sporting News Ad since they were more current.

This sounds more plausible to me than the theory that the M101-5 cards were produced before their "updated" set, but not distributed until after the updated M101-4 set.