Help With Uncle Jack's Cards -- Variations

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Posted By: RobertS

According to the SCD big book, Uncle Jack's candy cards (1933, R317) come in red or blue duotone. OldCardboard.com correctly adds purple to the list.

I recently picked up a green one (an unlisted color) -- but noticed that many of the green, purple and red cards exhibit different qualities than the blue ones I've seen -- particularly in terms of card thickness and presence of a border around the image.

Here is a blue one I acquired over a year ago (note that there is no border around the image):


Here is the new green one -- it appears to have a border around the image and the quality of the photo is a bit rougher (and the player name slightly harder to read). It also appears to be bigger by 1/8 of an inch and the card stock seems slightly different -- thicker and very slightly yellower (although my scan made it seem yellower than it actually is).


Here is another green one taken from Brian Lindholme's Web site, which also appears to exhibit the same qualities as my new green one:


This purple one from Huggins and Scott Auctions also has a border (easiest to see around the name panel):


Lastly, this red one from Leon's site also seems to have a border and appears to be of the thicker variety (note thickness of cardboard on the worn corners):


Any help is appreciated.

Were the blue one printed first? Were cards like my green one printed later in the Old Jack's print run, perhaps taken from the blue images? This could explain the very slightly rougher image quality of some of these cards (seemingly a slightly larger print dot pattern).
Were these cards ever reprinted (not the homemade eBay jobs, but by a dealer or manufacturer)?