Some of the mysteries and myths surrounding the most famous card in the hobby.

[G1911]

Just to add on, this structure is present in other sets that were part of the 1909-1912 project popularly credited to the ATC and AL. It is rare that cards were corrected, but when they were they typically had multiple backs. For example, the 3 spelling errors corrected in T218-1 all exist on 2 of the 4 backs, even though they represent a small percentage of surviving copies and the majority of those same 2 backs are the corrected version.

This ‘printing in waves’ appears to be a significant factor. The ATC ledger gives some evidence that some series were issued in waves; like the discordant dates for different sport subjects of T218-3.

Some 50 card sets seem to have had 25 unique cards to a sheet, and sometimes a back gets only half the subjects, like we see in T42. It seems to suggest wave printing again, not just a 2 sheet construction but those 2 sheets being done at a time gap during which decisions were made. I think our evidence suggests this happened with T220 also. The gap in between sheets saw multiple decisions made, to expand the back distribution, to cheapen the borders, to modify a couple cards, and to change the entire art style between at least four production runs over ~6 months.

While advertised and thought of as series, the traditional idea that all cards of a series were basically printed and issued together like Topps cards does not seem to be the case.