1921 Koester's Bread Cards on E-Bay

[rhettyeakley]

I actually have a major problem with the grading companies encapsulating anything as a Koesters Bread card that isn't one of the exclusive cards I wrote about earlier.

While these cards were all likely Koesters as they obviously came from the same sheet/find. The problem lies in that every W575-1 of Dave Bancroft leaping in the air could then be deemed to be a Koesters Bread card and then be "worth" multiples over what it should. Even though these have the provenance as being Koesters (in my opinion) they are all just W575-1 UNLESS the player was only made by the Koesters Company--

Provenance can be tricky, I can already see people buying up any and all Yankee & Giants W575-1 cards and sending them to the same grading companies and having them all encapsulated as Koesters. I don't really care whether the card was made by Koesters or not, if one can't tell by looking at it on it's own merits it shouldn't be encapsulated as such.

-Rhett

[nolemmings]

Rhett, can you verify that all of the w575-1s carry the exact same caption as Koester's except for what you call the exclusive cards, i.e. typeset and text are identical?

[rhettyeakley]

Todd, there are actually a few that have some slight variations but I am not ready to out these yet as I need to do more research to confirm my theory. That being said, the VAST majority (roughly 75%) of "Koester's" cards are simply W575-1 cards--one would not be able to tell one from the other (thus in my opinion they are the same thing).
-Rhett

I just wanted to add: To me it would be analogous to making a distinction between a regular Tom Barker game card a card that came out of the Fenway Brewery set. The only cards in the Fenway Brewery set that are any different are the Baker and the Scorecard/Instructions have had the red overprints on them. Any cards other than Baker and the Scorecard by themselves one would never be able to tell which "set" they originated from--thus they are the same thing (at least in my eyes).

[rhettyeakley]

Another way to think about these cards is this... we know that W575-1's were produced and distributed by many different outfits. I have seen many with caramel/candy stains and not to mention Henry Johnson & James Keating cards are simply W575-1's w/ their own rubber stamp on back. Thus, Koester's Bread was just another producer of the W575-1's--the only distinction is that we have surviving ads from Koesters and they decided to add a few players that were going to be playing in the World Series along with the already designed NY Giants and Yankees players that had been distributed via American Caramel, Gassler's, Haffner's, Witmor Candy, Clark's Bread, etc. along wth the other anonymous manufacturer cards (what we call W575-1). In other words since they already had many players' cards designed for these earlier promotions they added a few new guys to make the set the size they wanted consisting of only Giants and Yankee players.
-Rhett

[Leon]

Personally I always go by Burdick on this series, and anything except that which is specified in the ACC with a number, gets my designation of W575/1- D/Unc Gasslers (or whatever back it is). That way it specifies what type of card it is, a group class and the brand. What more can a guy want?