The wife and kids are at the beach giving me way too much free time. I recently picked up another ghost on the BST (thanks!) and this always gets me thinking about sheet layouts, player placements, etc.
There have been two major schools of thought. I've given each a name, not that I think they will stick.
- The "By The Dozens Theory" is that the sheets were comprised of a multiple of 12 (12, 24 or 36 generally). This has been tedzan's (hi Ted!) thoughts on layouts for quite a while. It's mentioned in this thread. In essence, Ted's thoughts are that there were 12 cards per row.
- The "Rule of 34 Theory" which postulates that since there are a few issues that have exactly 34 subjects, that the sheets could contain every subject (BL460, Hindu, Old Mill Brown, Sweet Cap 150-649). This is the theory discussed in this forum as well as a related article on T206Resource.com (hi Tim and Jim!). They postulate that there were 17 cards per row.
I've tended to lean towards the 34 theory for many of the same reasons that they point out, plus I've always believed it to be an odd number of cards per row based on the placement of the "big factory number" found at the bottom of some Sweet Caporal cards. The placement of that number is smack dab in the center of the card... why would it be there if there were an even number of cards in the row?
Anyway, those were just gut calls... no fact, math, or science behind it. But after thinking about it today, my current belief is that the "important" number is not 12 nor 34; it's 17. I do believe there were 17 cards per row (as stated in the "Rule of 34") for the non-American Beauty issued cards (another thread on that in the future).
So, we need to look at the issues that are a multiple of 17. And there's no better place to start than at the beginning. We already know that the Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 set is a multiple of 17 (34 cards), but did you know that so is Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 25 and 30. Both contain 153 cards (17 x 9).
The Piedmont 150 set has 156 cards, so the seventeen theory doesn't hold water... or does it. Here are my thoughts... the first one is pretty much given fact, but I am definitely just giving (what I believe to be an educated) guess on the other two.
- We know that the Magie error was corrected to Magee during a Piedmont run before it ran on Sweet Cap, so that only counts as 1 card on the sheet layout.
- I postulate that the Sweet Cap 150 run that included Wagner came before the Piedmont 150 run with ol' Honus. I believe that when Wagner was pulled, he was replaced by Jennings... so that only counts as 1 on the sheet layout. It also explains why Jennings isn't on the Sweet Cap cards.
- I believe the last of the Piedmont 150 runs came before the Sweet Caporal 150 runs. We know that the only Plank P150 cards have been hand cut, so I believe that was either a test run or a very late replacement of Lundgren Chicago (which is why he doesn't appear in the Sweet Cap 150). Regardless, when the Sweet Cap run started, Plank was used (and then used again during a 350 run). So, that only counts as one, too.
So, with the 3 replacements, we are at 153 cards sheet locations... 17 x 9. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves...