The E91 American Caramel Sets...Generic or Name Brand by Brian Parker

[calvindog]

[cfc1909]

here is Walter and a shared image

WJohnson91.jpg

[barrysloate]

Excellent article Brian.

While I don't think the E91's will be on anybody's list of all-time great sets, I also feel it is a bit underappreciated. Those with accurate likenesses are really pretty decent cards. But the repeated images, as well as that group of generic poses, is a disappointment. The question is why didn't the designers take the trouble to create real likenesses of all the players? Doesn't seem like it would have been that difficult to do.

[brianp-beme]

Thanks for all the input so far on my E91 article. Thanks Frank and Ted for the encouraging words, as well as Michael and Jeff for the comparision card scans. I think you can see with Michael's Harry Davis M116 as well as the Brown and Donlin that Jeff posted, the E91's are an exact match. I like how the E91 artists even duplicated the swath of hair coming beneath the cap on Brown. As far as the McGraw, if I remember correctly the Fan Craze is a perhaps more 'smiling' depiction of McGraw, and would perhaps show off the similiarities between the two better.

To answer some of Ted's questions, I believe that Burdick just didn't catch the fact that the E91A was issued in 1908, and stuck with it throughout the years. As far as the Walter Johnson as southpaw is concerned, the Johnson card is really the image of Waddell, as is seen in the E91A set. And finally the Tinker/Wagner cards are really images of Tinker...maybe someone can post the comparision cards I listed so as to show off the facial likenesses.

Keep the posts and comparision scans coming...I think it will be a nice revelation to all.

Brian

[brianp-beme]

To answer Barry's question about why the artists didn't produce accurate depictions on some of the E91B and all of the E91C set...laziness. Heck, it is why my article is posted here...I didn't feel like tracking down all the images of the comparision cards. Also budget issues could have come into play. Artists don't work for free. I imagine American Caramel thought they could get away with putting out inaccurate representations because, hey, these cards were produced for kids and what in the hell do they know anyway?

To me the E91C set is fairly worthless...just get one for your type collection. I would concentrate on the E91A issue and the E91B cards that have the same name designations as the E91A set.

Brian

[birdman42]

Originally Posted by brianp-beme

To me the E91C set is fairly worthless...just get one for your type collection.
Brian

Brian, I couldn't agree more.

Jim, can you send me that fairly worthless WAJO? It'll work in my type collection. I'll even pay some toward postage.

Bill

[brianp-beme]

I have mentioned that most of the E91A cards share a facial likeness to the actual subject, which is then attached to a generic body, but 5 years or more ago I believe it was Runscott who shared a full-body pitching photo of Reulbach, either on the net54 site or for crying out loud the old Full Count board, that is exactly the same as pictured on his E91 cards. I didn't save the image (old computer crash go boom), but because of its existence I believe the artists used available photo sources to create these cards. As my article stresses it seems that most of these photos were portraits, but like in the case of Reulbach fuller body shots could have been used on a handful as well. Maybe someone can track down the Reulbach side action shot, or perhaps runscott could come out of the woodworks and help make my point.

Brian

[brianp-beme]

You have to love the Library of Congress site...here is a link to a T204 Breshnahan, Tinker and Plank

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/displa.../~ammem_UOFl::

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/displa.../~ammem_UOFl::

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/displa.../~ammem_UOFl::

Brian