W553 Checklist or is it Leader Novelty?

[iggyman]

As many of you know, a few years back I purchased a scrapbook on eBay that had three W553 uncut strips. The cards were as follows:

STRIP #001: Fritch, Goslin, O'Doul, Simmons
STRIP #002: Cochrane, Grove, Grimes, Hornsby
STRIP #003: Gehrig, Ruth

Picture2 1657.jpg
W553RuthGehrig.jpg

If I could give a very brief history lesson for the newbies in the audience; W553's came in uncut strips of 'FIVE" cards or as recent evidence indicates they also came in individual cards packaged with gum.

http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/...2009/1535.html

All over the internet is the assumed W553 checklist:

# 1 Lu Blue - 1929 (W553)
# 2 Mickey Cochrane - 1929 (W553)
# 3 Jimmie Foxx - 1929 (W553)
# 4 Frankie Frisch - 1929 (W553)
# 5 Lou Gehrig - 1929 (W553)
# 6 Goose Goslin - 1929 (W553)
# 7 Burleigh Grimes - 1929 (W553)
# 8 Lefty Grove - 1929 (W553)
# 9 Rogers Hornsby - 1929 (W553)
# 10 Rabbit Maranville - 1929 (W553)
# 11 Bing Miller - 1929 (W553)
# 12 Lefty O'Doul - 1929 (W553)
# 13 Babe Ruth - 1929 (W553)
# 14 Al Simmons - 1929 (W553)
# 15 Pie Traynor - 1929 (W553)

My strip had ten of the cards in the checklist. The missing cards were:

Lu Blue
Jimmy Foxx
Rabbit Maranville
Bing Miller,
Traynor.

I've always wondered why the scrapbook I purchased only had ten cards? The bottom card of each four card strip had been cut and discarded and the bottom and perhaps top cards of the Gehrig/Ruth strip had also been discarded. My assumption has always been that the discarded cards were in all probability duplicates. The scrapbook had plenty of baseball newspaper articles plus a few 1933 Goudey cards pasted through-out but no other W553's.

After searching the far reaches of the internet and talking to a handful of advanced collectors. I'm convinced that the five missing W553 cards do not exist. In fact, I believe the five missing cards which do not belong on the checklist were actually Leader Novelty cards that were mislabeled. You can see some similarities (these are not my cards):

leadnovmaranville.jpg


I realize my theory has a generous amount of speculation, and perhaps a large cache of W553's is sitting in a barn right now waiting to be discovered, but after endlessly chasing those five missing cards I'm throwing down the gauntlet. Can anybody in this circle of collectors prove me wrong (or right)???

Lovely Day...