W553 Checklist or is it Leader Novelty?

[mike_v]

Hi all, I've been trying to learn more about some W553s that I inherited. Glad I stumbled across this thread.

FWIW, my collection has 16 cards (from a blue strip and a white strip), and the inventory is consistent with Iggy's theory that Blue/Foxx/Maranville/Miller/Traynor W553s don't exist.

I've scanned the cards and also made a group scan arranged vertically in the same order as Iggy's strips:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...8J8HD&lb=1&s=O
The blank row near the bottom is for the missing Gehrigs-- maybe my Grandpa stuck them in his bicycle tires? or hated the Yankees??

Iggy, I'm one of the newbies in the audience, so could you continue the history lesson and explain why it's commonly accepted that W553s came in strips of *five*, as opposed to strips of *ten* that might have been more commonly/conveniently distributed after being cut into two strips of 5 (or 4)?

Clearly, your strips of 4 don't jibe with the strip-of-5 story. Also, if you look at my "reconstructed strips" scan, the way the torn cards match up like a jigsaw puzzle makes me think that these may have originally been a strip of 10:
* The tops of the Frisches and bottom of the Ruth are the only cards that look machine-cut. (Bottom of white-Frisch and top of Hornsby are straight, but maybe they were trimmed after being torn since you can see the cut lines?)
* The tear-matches between Simmons-and-Cochrane and Cochrane-and-Grove especially make it seem that these weren't just strips of 5 (or 4). Granted, with the missing Gehrigs and trimmed Hornsby, it's far from clear that these were strips of ten. But hopefully there are some clues in here to add to the existing collective knowledge about these cards.

Iggy, how do your strips match up as a strip of 10? I could be fooling myself, but looks like the top of the Frisch and bottom of Ruth are straight, while the other edges are slightly diagonal and might match up?

Cheers,
Mike

PS, Individual cards can be seen in the gallery:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2264&k=NJ8J8HD

[ScottFandango]

Originally Posted by mike_v

Hi all, I've been trying to learn more about some W553s that I inherited. Glad I stumbled across this thread.

Originally Posted by mike_v

FWIW, my collection has 16 cards (from a blue strip and a white strip), and the inventory is consistent with Iggy's theory that Blue/Foxx/Maranville/Miller/Traynor W553s don't exist.

I've scanned the cards and also made a group scan arranged vertically in the same order as Iggy's strips:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...8J8HD&lb=1&s=O
The blank row near the bottom is for the missing Gehrigs-- maybe my Grandpa stuck them in his bicycle tires? or hated the Yankees??

Iggy, I'm one of the newbies in the audience, so could you continue the history lesson and explain why it's commonly accepted that W553s came in strips of *five*, as opposed to strips of *ten* that might have been more commonly/conveniently distributed after being cut into two strips of 5 (or 4)?

Clearly, your strips of 4 don't jibe with the strip-of-5 story. Also, if you look at my "reconstructed strips" scan, the way the torn cards match up like a jigsaw puzzle makes me think that these may have originally been a strip of 10:
* The tops of the Frisches and bottom of the Ruth are the only cards that look machine-cut. (Bottom of white-Frisch and top of Hornsby are straight, but maybe they were trimmed after being torn since you can see the cut lines?)
* The tear-matches between Simmons-and-Cochrane and Cochrane-and-Grove especially make it seem that these weren't just strips of 5 (or 4). Granted, with the missing Gehrigs and trimmed Hornsby, it's far from clear that these were strips of ten. But hopefully there are some clues in here to add to the existing collective knowledge about these cards.

Iggy, how do your strips match up as a strip of 10? I could be fooling myself, but looks like the top of the Frisch and bottom of Ruth are straight, while the other edges are slightly diagonal and might match up?

Cheers,
Mike

PS, Individual cards can be seen in the gallery:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2264&k=NJ8J8HD

this was destiny for you....especially since this thread is only a few days old

[iggyman]

Breaking News!..........................W553's were not distributed in "5" card strips!...................W553's are actually "10" card strips!.................more to come!

ticker tape.jpg

Mike,

Talking on behalf of all W553 aficionado's, I'm sure glad you brought this thread back from the dead. Thanks for the great pics and detective work. You've helped unravel a part of the W553 puzzle. My understanding and the hobby's, in regards to W553 being distributed as five card strips is due to the simple fact that at least a few (4 or 5) five card strips exist (or existed) in the prewar collecting world. To date, no ten card strip has ever surfaced (other then the ones I own, a few "4" card strips were last seen in the 1980's). I know of the existence of one "5" card B&W strip with the following cards from top to bottom (the owner is not a baseball card collector, but promises to send me a pic of the strip in the near future):

Grove, Grimes, Hornsby, Gehrig, Ruth.

I would expect the above mentioned strip to have the Ruth card at the bottom (with a nice machine cut on the bottom border), while the Grove would be at the top (with perhaps a ragged hand-cut top border). From our small sample we can start to see a pattern in the order they were printed (with this obscure set, you take your victories wherever you can get them). From top-to-bottom here is how they were printed:

Fritch, Goslin, O'Doul, Simmons, Cochrane, Grove, Grimes, Hornsby, Gehrig, and Ruth at the bottom.

For confirmation of the "10" card strip theory and the order in which they were printed, we can use Mike's (cut) sample. You can clearly see that most of the cut cards line-up. For further proof, we can use another strip of cards which was right in front of my nose. I feel like a dummy for not seeing this before, but the ten card strip of W553's that came out of a scrapbook also line up.

Here is a pic of strip one (with Fritch, Goslin, O'Doul, Simmons) followed by strip two (Cochrane, Grove, Grimes, Hornsby):

Strip #002.jpg


A pic of strip two (Cochrane, Grove, Grimes, Hornsby) followed by strip three (Gehrig, Ruth):

Strip #001.jpg

A pic of the bottom of strip three (Gehrig, Ruth) displays a nice even machine cut (front and back). Strip #001 with Fritch at the top, also displays a nice even machine cut (sorry, not pictured)):

Picture2 1671.jpg
Picture2 1670.jpg

Do we all agree on the cut pattern ? More then ever, I am 98.5% convince that the W553 set only has ten cards. A few leaps of faith would now be required to believe the set is only "15" cards. To the best of my knowledge, in this century, no W553 cards of Foxx, Grimes, Blue, Traynor, or Miller has surfaced. Not in VCP, nor eBay, nor any auction houses, nor in any online dealer inventory, nor on this board. Those "5" cards were added to the W553 checklist at almost the precise moment when Leader Novelty cards were gaining a little recognition within our small prewar baseball card universe. Those "5" cards were Leader Novelty cards which were wrongly classified as W553's by the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards!

This time I'm throwing down a bigger gauntlet!!!

Lovely Day...

[leftygrove10]

I think this is a huge discovery! Congratulations, guys! Great detective work!

[mike_v]

I love a good mystery...

To extend Iggy's gauntlet, if this 10-card-strip theory is correct, then it follows that there should be *no* copies of the W553 Ruth that are hand-cut/torn on the *bottom* edge (since Ruth was the bottom card of this theoretical 10-card strip and hence always machine-cut). Likewise, there should be *no* copies of the FriSch card with hand-cut *top* edges. Has anyone ever seen anything to the contrary? The existence of a bottom-torn Ruth could indirectly imply the existence of an 11th card (and a 15-card set is back in the realm of possibilities).


Also, a couple of pages I came across that are consistent with there being only 10 W553s. (Sorry if these are old news-- but this is all new to me)

Here's an auction from Aug 2010 for a "partial set" of 10 W553s-- can you guess which 5 are missing from the set?
http://www.legendaryauctions.com/Lot...x?lotid=110965

And this site has prices (based on previous sales?) for precisely the 10 cards we're talking about (and a blank for the other 5-- none ever sold?):
http://www.vintagecardprices.com/set...lue-Prices.htm

Mike

[mike_v]

Whoa! I was searching for W553 Ruths to test the theory I just posted about (torn bottom edges) and came across the following copy from Leon Luckey's site:
http://luckeycards.com/pw553ruth4.jpg
The back of the card didn't seem odd to me at first, but then I noticed the pencil writing. First thought was: "What a coincidence, some kid wrote the player's name on the back along with a random number that must refer to a checklist from some other set. That's just like what my grandpa did on all of his W553s."

Then I took another look at my grandpa's blue Ruth W553:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2279&k=Nf5N2pK
and realized:
HOLY #*%&-- LEON LUCKEY HAS THE WHITE W553 RUTH THAT USED TO BELONG TO MY GRANDPA!!!
What a ridiculously small world-- Leon even posted on this thread a few days ago!
I can't believe that. I wonder if the missing blue Hornsby and both Gehrigs are also out there somewhere with their names penciled in on the back... .

[Leon]

Originally Posted by mike_v

Whoa! I was searching for W553 Ruths to test the theory I just posted about (torn bottom edges) and came across the following copy from Leon Luckey's site:
http://luckeycards.com/pw553ruth4.jpg
The back of the card didn't seem odd to me at first, but then I noticed the pencil writing. First thought was: "What a coincidence, some kid wrote the player's name on the back along with a random number that must refer to a checklist from some other set. That's just like what my grandpa did on all of his W553s."

Then I took another look at my grandpa's blue Ruth W553:
http://mikeandlinda.smugmug.com/Othe...2279&k=Nf5N2pK
and realized:
HOLY #*%&-- LEON LUCKEY HAS THE WHITE W553 RUTH THAT USED TO BELONG TO MY GRANDPA!!!
What a ridiculously small world-- Leon even posted on this thread a few days ago!
I can't believe that. I wonder if the missing blue Hornsby and both Gehrigs are also out there somewhere with their names penciled in on the back... .

Very cool Mike. Sometimes I will erase marks and other times I don't. I won't usually erase them when there is potential for some more info being gleaned from the marks. I have a few other cards that have historical type writing too. On this Ruth I just never cracked it to to erase the marks. If we can find a suitable replacement, and you are going to collect the cards, I wouldn't mind trading my Ruth to you in order to get it back into your (grandfather's) collection. best regards

[iggyman]

First of all, let me apologize to Peter for constantly updating a non T206 thread (sorry Peter ). Hopefully, he won't get too upset. Okay, back to the task at hand; now that we know the order of the "ten known" cards in the W553 set, we can start to play all sorts of games.

For instance, if you took the graded W553 set that sold in the Legendary August 2010 auction and lined them up...

W553 Complete.jpg

Well, looky here, it sure hints at the fact that they all were originally in the same ten card strip. If no objections are heard from the four or five students still in the class, I'm going to count these cards as a third confirmation of the ten card strip theory. Regrettably or not, the dealer who won the cards discarded sold them on eBay for some green paper (I know a silly trade). Thus, a complete ten card "cut" strip which was probably original owner, is now scattered across the known prewar card universe. Does anybody volunteer a couple dozen or so years of their lives to put them together again?

Lovely Day...

[iggyman]

Mike,

A ten card strip is already an awfully long baseball card to give to a kid, I can't imagine a fifteen card strip existing. If we are going in the direction of hypotheticals; another "10" card strip could exist with the "5" cards in question and either non-sports cards included to round-out the strip, or "5" other baseball cards of that era were also printed..........which would make the W553 set at least a twenty card set; but I'm not ready to drink that kool-aid.

I sure wish Frank Ward would chime in with his experiences (on the W553 and Leader Novelty cards).

Lovely Day...

[iggyman]

I'm sure Leon will get a kick out of your grandfathers connection!

Mike, did your grandfather live in the Philadelphia area??? Was he anywhere near this address: "3411 N. 2nd St., Phila., PA" in circa 1930 ?

Lovely Day...