1939 Play Ball's

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Posted By: Billy Martin, Jr.

For those of you that are into the "newer" stuff you know that the '39-41 Play Ball series have two versions: one version with the names capitalized on the back and a second version with only the first letter of the name capitalized.

That having been said, I was looking through my cards today, and I noticed that amongst the few Play Ball cards that were first-letter-only capitalized every single one of them (purchased from separate sellers) looked more "smooth" in their front side printing vice the All caps versions where I could visibly see the print dots. Normal print dots for this series mind you, not uniform dot-matrix type dots.

Has anyone else seen this, and can anyone help me understand why this might be? Thanks.

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Posted By: Billy Martin, Jr.

Buying a few commons from a set to figure out what the set looks like is always a great idea, as has been mentioned here many times. I also picked up a microscope last night on ebay so that I can look at the cards under magnification.

Here's something that I saw today that concerned me though:

http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=carbs&include=0&since=-1&sort=3&rows=50

With this seller as your source, and a bathtub of tea you could retire on easy street from all the money of the uneducated masses.

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Posted By: jay behrens

I took a look at the dozen or so 1940 PBs I have and the the names on the back are in all caps. My suspicion would be the the cards with only the first letter in caps and a glossy finish are reprints.

Jay

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Posted By: Rhett

Actually Billy is correct that there are cards with both all Caps and Caps and Lower Case letters, but this is only found in the 1939 Playball set. In the 1939 Playball set most cards #ed 2-115 can be found in both varieties. Years ago there actually used to be premium (although small) attached to those cards with the Lower Case Lettering. It is interesting to note that apart from having their names different there are actually variations in this set that can only be found in one version or the other, the variations all had to do with changes in wording in the caption, errors in the captions being corrected, etc. On a side note, the 1941 Playball set also has a variation that is not well known, that being that #'s 1-48 (the low #'s) can be found with or without a 1941 copyright date in the back corner. The fist issue of the 1941 set contained 3's 1-48 and was issued in 1941 and on the back of these cards there is a date of 1941 found. The second issue of the set actually didn't come out until 1942 and this included the high number cards ("'s 49-72), but they also reissued the first series along with the high numbers but ommitted the 1941 date on the back. FYI.