1949 Leaf Theory

[Leon]

Originally Posted by yanks87

I did, and further down the rabbit hole I went. I actually spoke with Beckett last week, and a lot of what I found we review on an episode of his podcast. I'll boil it down to the cliff notes version.

**First off, Ted Z is the ultimate resource for all things from this era, his anecdotal information is second to none, a true gentleman of the hobby. Kudos to Steve Birmingham as well, we have a great email thread going spitballing ideas on everything from printing to plate variations. One more, George Vrechek from Sports Collectors Digest, his wrote an article in 2009 which proved to be a "Rosetta Stone" for a couple of things about the set.

The Chicago History Museum had donations from the Marshall Leaf estate, (Marshall) was the son of Sol Leaf, the founder of the company. In the boxes and printed materials, one thing became obvious; Leaf was a candy company, cards were made to get kids to buy candy. Leaf owned several businesses, not just Overland, but also Dietz Gum who both produced cards in the 30's, but they also did non-sport cards with the likes of Disney and Playboy which continued on into the 70's. Within the boxes, there were examples of the Boxing and Football cards, no baseball, but what I learned from all the materials and meeting minutes was that in '47 to '49, Leaf was growing. They were building a new factory on N. Cicero in Chicago and erecting neon billboards on Michigan Ave. I think the cards were a cannonball attempt in the candy market to make a big statement.

When you start digging into the stories from Ted, and put that against the Leaf marketing materials that I saw, along with the injunctions that Bowman brought against Leaf in March and May of '49, the latter aimed at East Coast distributors of the cards, it becomes 99% viable to say that the cards hit the market in '49. The ONLY way that this could be disputed would be to find someone like Ted in the Chicago area that bought the cards in 1948, and to this date I have not been able to find that. When you sprinkle in the info on the backs and the fact that the first run of cards have '49 copyrights sprinkled in with '48's, sales in 1948 would have cards that carry a '49 copyright, which doesn't make sense. As Ted has said, the copyright means that the text was written in '48, and when work resumed on the set in '49, the copyright changed. I also have a theory that there are cards from the sets that could have been produced as "salesman samples". I think the Graziano, alternate Newhouser and perhaps football card that did not change, could have actually been the cards sent out with the salesmen to show off the cards that would be following in 1949. Both of those cards carry the '48 copyright, though the front image of the short print Newhouser is different than the one or two that surface from time to time. This could also explain the blue back Joe Louis.

My short summation is going long, but one thing that I think is an important point to make, and it follows up what I started the thread with, there was a plate change made to this set yielding versions of the cards that are different than the earlier printings. of the variations that are recognized by the industry, Kent Peterson is the exact variation that I am talking about. MOST, not all, but MOST of the changes that were made can be found in the details of the hats. By removing the detail of the black plate, done with a solvent, the hats become brighter. I am working off of the uncut sheet that Ted provided earlier in the thread to illustrate how the cards changed. Another element that myself and Steve have noticed is the addition of color bars to the backgrounds to "close off" the cards in spots, so that the "white" of uniforms don't bleed into the borders. I will attach two images that I worked up that illustrate this, but take a look at your Leafs. you may have a variation and not realize it. The last part which of course will be added to an already hard sell is the "pink" prints, which in my theory were the last of the 'Late Prints" as they carry the missing hat details from the "Late Printing."

The images below show Stan Musial's card that I took into photoshop and left only the Cyan and Black channels on to illustrate how the cap details were removed and what the card looks like. The second image is the top row of the uncut sheet, top line is the first printing, second line is the late printing, third is the pink print.

**PHEW** for those that stayed with me, thank you, this has been an amazing research project and there is so much more to go into, but this brings it up to date...for now. Thanks for the continued interest and collaboration in cracking the code on this set!!

Nicely done! Great research. Thanks for sharing.

Teddy (hey Ted) is always fun to chat with. A wealth of expertise too, as well as the other gentlemen mentioned .

I love uncut strips and sheets but this is all I have, per the subject matter.
It's in a CSG 1.5 holder now.
.

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by Leon

Nicely done! Great research. Thanks for sharing.

Teddy (hey Ted) is always fun to chat with. A wealth of expertise too, as well as the other gentlemen mentioned .

I love uncut strips and sheets but this is all I have, per the subject matter.
It's in a CSG 1.5 holder now.
.

Thanks Leon! It's been a lot of fun, and still more to do. That's a good looking Stan, love all the cards in the set! Tough to chose a favorite!!

That said, Stan is right up there.

[Rare Stuff]

Hi Brian, Many years ago I went down the 49’ Leaf and Premiums rabbit hole!
Through my previous video of the premiums, I was contacted by a father and son. The Dad, like Ted Z., remembers and documented his purchasing and opening of packs of 1949 Leaf cards. He kept a journal of it, including receiving the premiums from the store owner, after purchasing the last packs in the box. In my latest premiums video, I share some of his diary. I’ve made arrangements to meet them at the National. Hopefully they’ll allow me to conduct an interview, but definitely will discuss and document the conversation. Here is my latest YouTube video discussing the 49’ leaf set:

https://youtu.be/RygHLVtvmqM

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by Rare Stuff

Hi Brian, Many years ago I went down the 49’ Leaf and Premiums rabbit hole!
Through my previous video of the premiums, I was contacted by a father and son. The Dad, like Ted Z., remembers and documented his purchasing and opening of packs of 1949 Leaf cards. He kept a journal of it, including receiving the premiums from the store owner, after purchasing the last packs in the box. In my latest premiums video, I share some of his diary. I’ve made arrangements to meet them at the National. Hopefully they’ll allow me to conduct an interview, but definitely will discuss and document the conversation. Here is my latest YouTube video discussing the 49’ leaf set:

https://youtu.be/RygHLVtvmqM

Those premiums are amazing, there are some in your collection I have never seen! Picking up one or two is definitely on my short list to go with my set.

I watched the video all the way through, Ruth died in August of '48, you are correct that the backs refer to the 1948 season, and on Lou Boudreau's card, there is a reference to his MVP award that he got in late November of 1948, and then there are a couple of transactions that kick the can into December which would move production and distribution into an unrealistic time frame.

I'll be interested to hear about your interview, please ask where he grew up, the distribution of the cards is something that I am trying to figure out and it would be great to put another marker in the sand!

Thanks for sharing all the great info!

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by Rare Stuff

Hi Brian, Many years ago I went down the 49’ Leaf and Premiums rabbit hole!
Through my previous video of the premiums, I was contacted by a father and son. The Dad, like Ted Z., remembers and documented his purchasing and opening of packs of 1949 Leaf cards. He kept a journal of it, including receiving the premiums from the store owner, after purchasing the last packs in the box. In my latest premiums video, I share some of his diary. I’ve made arrangements to meet them at the National. Hopefully they’ll allow me to conduct an interview, but definitely will discuss and document the conversation. Here is my latest YouTube video discussing the 49’ leaf set:

https://youtu.be/RygHLVtvmqM

Those premiums are amazing, there are some in your collection I have never seen! Picking up one or two is definitely on my short list to go with my set.

I watched the video all the way through, Ruth died in August of '48, you are correct that the backs refer to the 1948 season, and on Lou Boudreau's card, there is a reference to his MVP award that he got in late November of 1948, and then there are a couple of transactions that kick the can into December which would move production and distribution into an unrealistic time frame.

I'll be interested to hear about your interview, please ask where he grew up, the distribution of the cards is something that I am trying to figure out and it would be great to put another marker in the sand!

Thanks for sharing all the great info!

[steve B]

Brain has done some great work.

I would correct one thing though.

Printed areas are typically not removed from plates with Solvent, but by drawing over them with a limestone stick.(Stoning off) The changes in these cards are as far as I can tell too consistent and clean for that.

I believe they were done at the mask level, or earlier. Either making new halftones, or redoing the masks to make the changes.
Then making entirely new plates.

This was intentional, but the why is a bit of a mystery to me.
------------------------

Plates wear out, and new ones need to be made if the print runs are big enough. It's possible they hadn't saved the original masks, or that they did very little proofing at all and needed to make changes.


We disagree on the order of the printing, I think the pinks and the related ones with normal colors were first, the others later. We both have fairly convincing explanations though, so I figure it's a coin toss until some kind of proof turns up. (Like if Ted remembers when the pink ones showed up)

There are differences, usually major on all four colors, and rarely what I call a transitional type, where for example the blue that usually goes with a particular yellow is on a card that has a different yellow. Those would give a decent way of telling which came first, but so far I've only seen maybe 2-5.

Some cards the differences are very easy to spot, on others I still haven't found any.

I've been working on a virtual master set for years, and I'm not even halfway done. And haven't even started on boxing and football.

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by steve B

Brain has done some great work.

I would correct one thing though.

Printed areas are typically not removed from plates with Solvent, but by drawing over them with a limestone stick.(Stoning off) The changes in these cards are as far as I can tell too consistent and clean for that.

I believe they were done at the mask level, or earlier. Either making new halftones, or redoing the masks to make the changes.
Then making entirely new plates.

This was intentional, but the why is a bit of a mystery to me.
------------------------

Plates wear out, and new ones need to be made if the print runs are big enough. It's possible they hadn't saved the original masks, or that they did very little proofing at all and needed to make changes.


We disagree on the order of the printing, I think the pinks and the related ones with normal colors were first, the others later. We both have fairly convincing explanations though, so I figure it's a coin toss until some kind of proof turns up. (Like if Ted remembers when the pink ones showed up)

There are differences, usually major on all four colors, and rarely what I call a transitional type, where for example the blue that usually goes with a particular yellow is on a card that has a different yellow. Those would give a decent way of telling which came first, but so far I've only seen maybe 2-5.

Some cards the differences are very easy to spot, on others I still haven't found any.

I've been working on a virtual master set for years, and I'm not even halfway done. And haven't even started on boxing and football.

Hey Steve! solvents came up in my discussion with my Great Uncle who operated a press for my Great Grandfather in the late 40's, that's why I put it in there. It feels like a mask to me, but that is in my more modern understanding of things, (as in the computer work I do today). I am going to field a guess that it was a re-do of all plates, allowing the subtractions to be made on the K, and the additions on the C-M-Y. Since you too worked on a press you will know better than I, mostly since I do my masking nowadays with keystrokes and mouse clicks! HA!!

Bottom line, they changed it, and I agree, it is all about the WHY now.

[Pat R]

I still think that you might eventually find that the 2 or 3 different variations were printed in different places.

A couple of ads that may not have been posted before.

Spokane Washington May 12 1949
Leaf Baseball Spokane_Chronicle_Thu__May_12__1949_.jpg



Dewey Oklahoma July 15 1949
Leaf Baseball Dewey Oklahoma The_Washington_Countian_Fri__Jul_15__1949_.jpg