W553 Checklist or is it Leader Novelty?

[mike_v]

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...

[glchen]

BTW, looks like that I own the W553 Gehrig from the Legendary auction. I was not the originally winner of that lot however, and don't know where the other cards are.

[iggyman]

Mike,

The first five cards from the Legendary auction (Fritch, Goslin, O'Doul, Simmons, and Cochrane) have a little bit of a blank right border and line-up really nicely. While the next five (Grove, Grimes, Hornsby, Gehrig, and Ruth) are cut right on the edge of the right border with no blank cardboard space. At first glanced, I assumed a slight angle cut but now I'm not so sure. These cards obviously saw a blade before the cross country trip to SGC, which makes it tough to tell.

3411 N. 2nd St., Phila., PA was the address of Bubble Gum Novelties (Marble Gum). Evidence indicates that the W553 set, containing sports and non-sports cards, was perhaps printed at that address and packaged with gum. That is, the w553 set is actually one of the first (actually second) baseball cards issued with gum (Colgan chips a round baseball player portrait disc about the size of a silver dollar was distributed with gum in 1909). One day I will start a Net54 poll to determine whether the Colgan chips are actually baseball cards?????

[iggyman]

Gary, I really like the red W553 Gehrig. You can see the cut line on the top border where someone made a real nice cut. The bottom border was obviously left alone and probably exhibits the original cut from a circa 1930's kid. Nice card!

Lovely Day...

[iggyman]

This uncut W553 five card strip is new to the hobby. It's been sitting in a desk drawer for a long time and still resides there. The order of the strip is as expected, the only monkey wrench is the cut. The top and bottom borders appear to be machine cut as opposed to hand cut.

5 card w-553 strip.jpg

Robert Groves-top card.jpg

Thus, the latest - latest - latest "most recent" new theory is that these puppies were definitely sold/distributed/smuggled out of the factory in "FIVE" and "TEN" card strips, while the W553 film star version was definitely distributed individually and with gum . I believe Frank Ward called the "5" and "10" card strip theory about six years ago. You were right Frank. As you were.

Not my card but for comparison sake, here is one of the W553 film star cards.

w553 montgomery.jpg

Lovely Day...

[camlov2]

Here are some pictures showing that these were produced in a 10 cards strip, sorry that the images are not better.

[brianp-beme]

You would think this thread would bring Iggy out of hiding...for the good of all mankind come back Iggy!

Brian