1936 V355 World Wide Gum ?

[nolemmings]

A little late getting back to this– I thought I had posted earlier. Matthew, real nice research in your link. Anyway, hoping to keep the topic on or near the front page, here is what I was thinking a week or so ago.

Bryan, thanks for the jump on the cardback research– I looked at several but was too lazy to write them down. I did see where Rabbit Maranville is identified as the Montreal manager and that the card states he was signed by them in October, 1936. Seems that most of the cards printed in late 1936 or early 1937 are for International League subjects, which was fertile territory for a Canadian producer and largely ignored in the earlier Goudey sets. I would agree that the set could very well be skip-numbered as seen in 1933 Goudey, although I’m not yet on board with the notion that sheet size was 5x9=45 cards. Maybe someone has a scan of a WWG Hockey sheet from 1937-38 (same set size). As I recall Goudey was really starting to slide as early as 1934 and its baseball offerings diminished each year, so it’s possible this was handed off to its Canadian counterpart as a cost-saving measure.

In some sense this WWG set reminds me of the Diamond Stars 1934-36 distribution, although that company had the decency to print copyright dates on the cards for us to figure out when they were issued, or at least which came first. We also know that National Chicle issued its Batter-Up cards over the three-year span 1934-36. Here several of the WWG cards have bio info that ends before 1936 and with no mention of what happened “last season”. It’s almost as if these were contemplated if not produced before 1936. One card that has stood out in my cursory review is Red Rolfe, listed as a Giants infielder. Rolfe of course was a Yankee, which makes this card a UER; however, I see that Red came up as shortstop in 1934 but the following year was the starting third baseman for the Bombers, playing 136 games there and only 17 at SS. Arguably he should have been known to WWG as a 3B well before 1936. Could it be that some of these cards are actually from 1935?