How to tell a Koester Bread from an E121 or W575?

[rhettyeakley]

Frank, at the expense of getting into another W575-1/Koester's debate I'll speak a little about the Brown card.

The Brown card was only ever produced as it was for Koester's (or potentially another company that wanted to do a similar promotion that we just don't have the surviving ads for). Thus EVERY Ed. Brown card will have his designation as Outf. as we was never produced by any other company for distribution, ie you will never find a Brown card with ANY type of advertising on the back. I can't confirm the data you provided about the Hoyt pointing in different directions as his E121 Series of 80 is pretty darn tough as he will only be found with the two "rare" backs in that series--you will not find Hoyt with the common E21 back.

Also, I wanted to point out that true W575-1's are WAY harder to find than I think anybody realizes. They are difficult to find, as usually when you find a blank backed W575-1 it has a Henry Johnson back stamp OR it is from the W575-1B set that we have spoken of before that is probably more correctly designated as W501 type 2 but since there is no G-4-22 on top people have resisted the attempt to designate them that way. I have actually found true W575-1's w/o the Henry Johnson backs to be especially tough to find and may actually be outnumberred in the overall population by the Koester's cards themselves as that was a fairly well distributed promotion.

Keep in mind that most W575-1's have the Henry Johnson stamp and those cards were distributed at the same time as the early print runs of the E121 cards so you will not find any of the late E121 series of 80 additions (which a lot of the rare backed E121's are) so you will not find a Hoyt with that back.

-Rhett

[dougscats]

Thanks for the input, Rhett, Brian, and Frank.
I'm glad you quoted that text, Brian; I hadn't quite grasped that when I first read it, but you made it clear: It's definitely not a W575-1.

Right now I'm leaning towards your wet tissue technique, Frank, to rule out it being an E-121. I hope to get around to doing it in the next few days. I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, if anyone has anything to add, please do.

Doug

[fkw]

Rhett, one last question...

In my 2009 SCD Catalog, the checklist for W575-1 has an "Ed" Brown listed.

Is it just a misidentified Koester's card in the W575-1 checklist?

It seems like it would be easy to make that mistake, especially back when most of these checklists were formed. Wonder if there are others?

[rhettyeakley]

Frank, I didn't see your post until today.

Basically, it is a "mistake" but in reality Koester's Bread cards really are simply W575-1's, we just happen to know who did the promotion so we know to catalog them as Koester's and not W575-1. Brown was only issued by Koester's--as are some of the other "W575-1's listed in the SCD, specifically:
-Frank Baker
-Jesse Barnes
-Howard Berry
-Ed Brown
-Bill Cunningham
-Alex Ferguson
-"Chicken" Hawks
-Fred Hoffman
-John McGraw (Mgr.)
-John Mitchell
-Charles Stengel (Port)


The ENTIRE LISTING for W575-1's in the SCD needs to be thrown out (and we need to start over) as it is a conglomeration of at least 5 different sets all thrown together. We need to scrap it and start all over again. The 5 "sets" listed there are as follows...

-true W575-1's (totally blank backed E121 type cards-on the same stock as E121's)
-Koester's Bread cards
-Henry Johnson cards (argument can be made that these should be listed along w/ regular W575-1's and tat's probably valid but people tend to want to classify these by themselves)
-James P. Keating cards (same argument as Henry Johnson's)
-W575-1B (or W501 type 2's)

The last one is the one that REALLY muddies up the water as to the untrained eye they are the same but the photo quality sucks and the card stock is totally different so it IS it's own set that has a checklist that is the same as W501 just w/o the G-4-22 at top.

Not everyone will follow (or care about) what I just stated but Frank you will understand what I'm talking about.
-Rhett