[todeen]

Originally Posted by BobC

Tim,

Great info, but have a follow-up question though. The W711 cards appear to have been issued as three distinct, separate sets with the first issued in 1938, second in 1939, and third in 1940, at least according to the old SCD catalogs. So were the W711 cards supposedly being distributed by the French Bauer dairy for all three years/types, or possibly only for one (or two) of those years/types? And if not for all three, can we tell for which year(s)/type(s) they were?

We know the French Bauer Dairy had some advertising interaction with the Reds team, or at least some of the Red's players, when they put some Red's players on their milk bottle caps, but that wasn't till 1963. If the dairy was actually responsible for producing and distributing any of these W711 cards, wouldn't it make sense for them to also have the French Bauer name at least somewhere on the cards to enhance their advertising worth? If French Bauer went to the trouble and expense to have the cards produced, adding their their name would be nominal cost, at worst. That said, is it possible that the Cincinnati team was the primary producer and issuer of these W711 cards after all, and that maybe the team then also made them available to local companies like the French Bauer Dairy to use and help distribute them? Maybe French Bauer was an advertiser with the Reds team back then, and so got permission to use these cards as an incentive to get people to sign up for their delivery service. And if true, there may have been other local Cincinnati businesses distributing these W711 cards also. Just speculating.

Originally Posted by brianp-beme

Thanks for the info and posting the image of the article, and thanks to Mr. Bumpus for originally sharing it as well. Because of the scarcity of some players, it makes one think that these could have been issued on a weekly basis. All the previous info I remember indicated it was a box set available at the ballpark. But perhaps these could have also been distributed as mentioned through the dairy, and perhaps even individually or in a group as a giveaway at the park.

I have always liked the critters, no matter how they were distributed...they have great images of the players, and are just a cool group of cards.

Brian

The 1940 Reds b/w set (Harry Hartman set) can routinely be found in boxed set form, with box. I would agree this was likely sold at or near the stadium.

But I have never seen a box for the 1938 set. I have never seen a complete set. This leads me to believe it is not connected with the team, the dairy connection seems more likely. Although I don't know why there is no advertisement.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk