W553 Checklist or is it Leader Novelty?

iggyman · #1 03-15-2012, 01:32 PM

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 · #2 03-15-2012, 04:10 PM

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

mike_v · #3 03-15-2012, 09:02 PM

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 · #4 03-15-2012, 09:18 PM

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 · #5 03-15-2012, 11:23 PM

Quote:

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 · #6 03-16-2012, 02:02 PM

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...

mike_v · #7 03-16-2012, 02:16 PM

Iggy, I was actually looking at the same thing. I'm not sure this red set should be counted as confirmation, though. This set looks off-center (shifted to the right). If you look at the left margin of the top five cards, they look pretty consistent, but the left margin of the bottom five looks quite different (wider). That makes me think these 10 cards were *not* once a single strip. Thoughts?

Also, I'm not sure that the top-to-bottom cut matching is as clear as it is on our 3 sets. Looks like these have been trimmed down. But I suppose there aren't any large-bottom-margin to large-top-margin pairings, which is something.

mike_v · #8 03-16-2012, 02:31 PM

Leon, it certainly would be nice to reunite that collection. Even more if I could find the missing Gehrigs and Hornsby (probably not too likely!?). But for now, please just let me know if you ever get a hankering to do anything with that card, and in the meantime I'll educate myself a bit more and continue to sort through the rest of the collection to see where I'd like to go from here. Will be in touch. Thanks.

BTW Iggy- Right era, but my grandfather was a St Louis guy. Is that address near and dear to you? I'm not too far away...

iggyman · #9 03-15-2012, 09:21 PM

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 · #10 03-15-2012, 09:30 PM

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...

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