E123 Curtis Ireland Candy

[kmac32]

I was wondering what the prevalence of certain individual players are in the Curtis Ireland candy set and how common are the cards. I understand that in theory, all players in the V100 Willard's Chocolate set should exist in Curtis Ireland. However I was reading last night that the cards were issued in increments and that the complete set may not have been issued. Also cards that were turned in to the company for the prize were to have been stamped as used and returned to the senders after the contest. Has anyone ever seen a cancelled card? Does anyone have a list of the cards actually issued? I have seen a few individual cards here and there. Nobody has ever discussed owning a complete set. Comments?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by kmac32

I was wondering what the prevalence of certain individual players are in the Curtis Ireland candy set and how common are the cards. I understand that in theory, all players in the V100 Willard's Chocolate set should exist in Curtis Ireland. However I was reading last night that the cards were issued in increments and that the complete set may not have been issued. Also cards that were turned in to the company for the prize were to have been stamped as used and returned to the senders after the contest. Has anyone ever seen a cancelled card? Does anyone have a list of the cards actually issued? I have seen a few individual cards here and there. Nobody has ever discussed owning a complete set. Comments?

This is one of those sets that is too scarce for it's own good. I haven't heard about them being issued in increments but it's certainly feasible. I have probably seen close to 100 of these cards and haven't seen any that I could tell were canceled. That too wouldn't surprise me though. I am not sure a positive ID'd list is out there but there may be. I don't know of a complete set either but there could be one. This is a set that probably has more questions than answers, so far. I do know that Curtis Ireland was a St. Louis candy company and they did do quite a bit of advertising as the boxes and ads do pop up from time to time. It took me a while when I first started, to get my first one, but then more have shown up and I don't consider them "rare" but do consider them "scarce". I believe there was an Ireland's Candy and then sometime after that "Curtis" became involved. So many other things to research this is not one I have done much on (yet). It should be noted too that Burdick or Egan NEVER cataloged these. It was Bert Randolph Sugar that did it in his Sports Collectors Bible series.

[kmac32]

Leon,

Nice card and interesting on the Curtis company. Some of the reading said that Curtis was eventually bought up by Nestlé. I also read that Curtis was the manufacturer of Baby Ruth and Butterfinger. Those eventually became Nestlé products. On the subject of cards, did you ever actually see an Elmer Miller E 123 card?

[Leon]

Hi Ken
I don't remember if I have seen an Elmer Miller card or not. LL

[kmac32]

Never hurts to ask to see if the card even exists. Figured that somebody on the board might know in my quest to collect as many variations of Miller.

[brianp-beme]

No Miller info, but about 3-4 years ago Lew Lipset had quite a few in one of his auctions. I don't remember the exact amount, but he had several lots with perhaps 30 to 40 total different cards? I remember being impressed by the quantity, as normally you only see these individually or in very small groupings.

Brian