1949 Leaf Cards Skip Numbered?

[ChiefBenderForever]

Football and boxing cards are mixed into the set.

[PolarBear]

Originally Posted by JohnnyHarmonica

Football and boxing cards are mixed into the set.

In many cases though, they have the same numbers as the baseball cards.

[ChiefBenderForever]

Originally Posted by PolarBear

In many cases though, they have the same numbers as the baseball cards.

I didn't know that, I guess I'm not sure what is up with that, I thought football and boxing cards were the inbetween missing numbers. Ted Z and others that have put the set together would know what they did.

[Exhibitman]

I do not buy the idea that the FB and boxing were meant to be one set:

1. Leaf's boxing set has 49 cards (plus the famous pulled Graziano) on 1 sheet (7 x 7). No mixed sheets have ever been found. Every flipped sheet printing I have ever seen (wrong backs and double-printed fronts both) have the same configuration, i.e., the same two guys on the cards: Jeffries-Loughran, Fields-Baer, etc. The packs, wrappers and ads I've seen do not mention two sports, only boxing. There is no indication that the two were intentionally printed together or sold together.

2. If the FB and boxing were one set then why did Leaf make a boxing album? And why does it have space for 3x as many cards in it as are in the set?

No, I think greed is the reason. If certain numbers were missing the kiddies would buy more cards in an effort to fill in the set, and the album came with extra spaces to accommodate the many dupes that the kiddies would have as a result of fruitlessly busting packs to chase the missing cards.

[toppcat]

There may have been some contractual issues with a few guys that were with Bowman but they definitely skip numbered the set to sell more card IMHO. There is no pattern between the various BB, FB and Boxing cards that I can see as there are common numbers everywhere.

[paul]

I think it was to get the kids to keep on buying, looking for cards that don't exist. Further proof of this is the fact that the card numbers in the rare second series are interspersed throughout the set. For example, I think Satchel Paige is card number 3, and he is in the late-issued rare series.

[tedzan]

In 1949, Leaf intended to have 168 cards in their BB set. As we all know, they issued two series of 49 cards each = 98 cards.

So, what happened to the other 70 cards ? We simply dont know. As a 10 year old kid in 1949, I collected these BB cards.
I spent many of my pennies buying Leaf's trying to put together a complete set, because we didn't have checklists and the
card's numbers were all over the place (from 1 to 168).

LEAF GUM skip-numbered these cards simply as a "marketing trick", so that us kids would keep buying cards. And, believe me,
it worked.

Goudey played a similar "trick" with their 1933 BB set when they didn't issue 21 of their Low # cards until late in the Fall of '33.
And of course, their Lajoie card was not available till 1934.


TED Z