E98 (more discussion)

[philliesphan]

Rob-

I'm amazed at how well the centering is on nearly ever card in this group.

m

[barrysloate]

Rob- my thoughts about it are pretty much what you said. Some retailer ordered a large group of these around 1910, let's say 1000 is a reasonable number, and started giving them out to customers at point of purchase. And not too far into it he gave up. Maybe he went out of business. Maybe it became too much of a nuisance. Maybe kids kept coming into the store asking for the cards without buying anything. Whatever the reason, the merchant took the remaining 750 cards, virtually all pristine and unused, put them neatly in a box, and threw them into his attic.

And I'm sure he was not the only one to do this. All over the country, for whatever reason, unused promotional cards went into storage. But what is so extraordinary about these is they survived for more than a century without being thrown out. The family never moved. They never cleaned out the attic. They didn't find the cards in 1960, and decide to sell them then because somebody offered the princely sum of $100 for them. They survived forever. Imagine selling a house to somebody and inadvertently leaving a million dollars in the attic? Well somebody did exactly that.

My story is pure speculation but I bet it's also not that far from what actually happened. And the new buyers of the house not only got a home but a winning lottery ticket thrown in for good measure. What an amazing story.

[caramelcard]

I think I saw there were no Lajoie cards in the group.

That's probably because Lajoie was the most popular card for this owner being from Ohio. He gave them all away or had them in his store/shop. (Not sure if this has already been mentioned.)

Marc,

Good point about the centering. The E98s had pretty darn good quality control and were sometimes diamond cut left to right like one of the Jennings cards in the group. I haven't seen a lot of miscut cards on the fronts, top to bottom.

Barry,

Great post. Do you know how many total cards were in this find?

Rob

[Rob D.]

Originally Posted by caramelcard

I think I saw there were no Lajoie cards in the group.

That's probably because Lajoie was the most popular card for this owner being from Ohio. He gave them all away or had them in his store/shop. (Not sure if this has already been mentioned.)

Rob,

Not sure I agree -- at least 100 percent.

Bob M. long has said that the red Lajoie is one of the tougher E98s. If that card -- outside of this find -- could be found in the same numbers as other reds, then I would agree with your theory. But if a red Lajoie was indeed a scarcity before this find, it would make sense that there wouldn't be a lot of them in this group. (Although the fact that there wasn't at least one strikes me as odd. It is certainly possible that the original owner didn't have as many Lajoies to begin with.)

Hope this makes sense. It's definitely fun to speculate.

Rob

[marcdelpercio]

Perhaps it's a combination of the region and player that makes certain colored cards scarce. For example, say for whatever reason that a high quantity of the red cards went to the Ohio area and that these were distributed as a premium. Naturally, Lajoie would be the first card that every kid would want to choose, trade, handle, etc and this led to a much greater percentage of red Lajoies having been long since lost or obliterated, while the stacks of the less popular regional players wouldn't get nearly the same demand and attention.

[caramelcard]

I don't think any cards were produced in lesser numbers. It's very unlikely since they were probably all printed in equal numbers.

I think it's popularity that makes some cards scarce. And, there are several aspects to this.

Common players like Dahlen, Vaughn, and Tenny might be more scarce because less folks held onto them. We see a ton of Cobbs and Wagners because they were already stars at the time and more people would stash them away.

On the flipside (as marc brings up above), certain player/color combos might've been more popular depending on where these groups of cards were distributed.

Cards like Mack that are semi tough might not have been even close to as interesting to consumers of the day as they are to us.

There are a lot of variables since it's possible this issue was available to retailers all over the region, but this find might shed some light on why certain cards are tough to find.

Barry, I agree that the set is most likely not a candy set. Of course, the only additional info we have is the Old Put stamp which makes it a tobacco set.

I think it's most likely a catch all issue that was used to support different products.

We have seen orange stains on several cards which complicates things a bit. The only reason I can think of that the cards would be stained is if they were enclosed with a candy that got a bit too hot.

For a while, I thought it was possible that only certain colors were sent to certain regions or that one color would be used for one product. (Old Puts support this theory). But, this find changes my thinking on that.


Rob

[Rob D.]

If we accept that there are more Cobbs and Wagners available today compared with Dahlen, Vaughn, etc., because Cobb and Wagner were popular players at the time and more people wanted them (which I agree with), then I'm not sure we can accept that the red Lajoie is scarce because more of them were handed out, and those cards subsequently were lost, destroyed, etc.

[barrysloate]

I don't know exactly but I think it's around 750.

I agree that the Lajoie's all went first. Can't explain why there are no Walshes, or only one Matty. Still some mysteries for sure.

And I know I'm not the first to think this, but I believe that E98 were not candy cards at all. They share designs with some candy issues, but they were distributed in a different manner than other E-cards.