Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveW
I’ve always liked this set but I don’t know a lot. Any theories on why card 68 is so scarce? From your layout, it should be the same as any other.
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The 1933/1934 Goudey Lajoie card is probably the best parallel. Card was printed with other 1934 Goudey series four cards but not put in packs. Ultimately it was only distributed to collectors who wrote letters to complain about the holes in their 1933 sets.
The main difference with the Fleer Williams card is that some made it into packs before the card was pulled. From there, card may have still been printed but not added to packs. Again, many collectors only received when they wrote in to complain about the hole in their set.
But let me also clarify something from the article. These surviving sheets may all date prior to the need to pull the card. True, we would assume the most sheets (by far) would have been printed afterward (else the card wouldn't be very tough). However, I doubt that the surviving sheets simply came from some random time during the print run. Rather, I think it's more likely that they were more like "file copies" that would have come at the very beginning. As such, the presence of card 68 on these sheets doesn't necessarily tell us that it remained there for any significant length of time.
Ultimately, my article was more about identifying a pattern for all surviving print sheets that helps explain why we have the ones we have and why certain other ones don't exist. What I don't speculate on in the article is when during the year these sheets were printed, though I'll offer here that I believe it was very early.