Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhibitman
What you are referring to are print variations from year to year. However, not all years featured completely redone artwork. The company wasn't thinking of obsessive OCD whackos like us when it made its sets each year, so the attention to detail wasn't there. I mean, they got so lazy that the just crudely crossed stuff out sometimes.
The Rizzuto and Doby had "An Exhibit Card" scratched out rather than removed and redone.
The point is that micro-analyzing the made in USA/printed in USA only gets you so far, it is a rule with many exceptions. The only way to definitively determine whether a card had a multiple year run is to see uncut sheets, which is how we know for sure that the Salutations Ted Williams was issued through 1960:
Other evidence is on the machine headers. When you see different cards clustered together it is because some cards had multi-year runs. There are also checklists made as promos in 1950 and they show Jackie Robinson but not Satchel Paige.
Further proof is in the population. The Robinson card is readily found in normal times in decent numbers. The Paige has always been a 'handful available at best' kind of card. I have been watching them for years because I love the card.
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This is very helpful and agreed when it comes to just finding them in general. The Satchel I recently got, dug like crazy to get and then one day just landed on my lap out of pure "luck". Robinsons, I have a couple and didn't need to sweat in order to get them.
I've seen the scratched out versions plenty of times but did not realize the extent to which the same markings were printed. I have never noticed differences in the Robinson card aside from the density of the sepia tone from images online (which could just be lighting). The ones I have held in my hands, nothing.
And you never know. Maybe they did all these things just to play a massive prank on OCD people 70 years in the future
. If so, mission accomplished.
