W519 and Decalco Litho Co. of Hoboken, NJ

With my recent pick ups of a couple of W519's I wanted to post a little more about these cards.

Image courtesy of Oldcardboard.com

There are two types of W519 baseball cards, and two types of the Type I variety.  This means there are types W519-1-1, W519-1-2 and W519-2.  The Type I's are the numbered variety and the Type II's are not numbered. 

The two varieties of the numbered Type I's come with the numbers either in black (Type 1-1) or blue (Type 1-2).  The blue numbered cards are much harder to find than the black numbered cards and carry a premium of about 5x that of the other types of W519's.  These Type 1-1's have 20 cards in the set with 18 portraits and 2 full body poses and they have various color backgrounds.  The Type 1-2's (blue numbers)  are believed to have 10 cards in the set.

The Type II's are unnumbered and all have blue backgrounds.  There are ten cards in this checklist.  The unnumbered Type II's are a little more common that the numbered cards.

Below is a checklist of the three sets borrowed from my supporter Oldcardboard.com.

Please note: Cards in both W519 Numbered sets are numbered on the card; for the W519 Unnumbered set they are not. The numbers in parenthesis for the W519-2 Unnumbered set indicate the sequence numbers (based on player's last name) that are generally used by collectors for checklist purposes. 

Card #
W519-1-1 (Black #s)	W519-1-2 (Blue #s)	W519-2 (Unnum)	Player
1	16	(8)	Guy Morton
2	17	(7)	Rube Marquard
3	18	(3)	Gabby Cravath (Gavvy)
4	19	(6)	Ernie Krueger
5	20	(10)	Babe Ruth
6	-	-	George Sisler
7	-	-	Rube Benton
8	-	-	Jimmie Johnston
9	-	-	Wilbur Robinson (Wilbert)
10	-	-	Johnny Griffith
11	-	-	Frank Baker
12	-	-	Bob Veach
13	-	-	Jesse Barnes
14	-	-	Leon Cadore
15	-	-	Ray Schalk
16	11	(5)	Kid Gleasen (Gleason)
17	12	(9)	Joe Murphy
18	13	(4)	Frank Frisch
19	14	(2)	Eddie Collins
20	-	-	Wallie Schang
-	15	(1)	Eddie Cicotte

W519-1-1

These cards were produced by The Decalco Litho Co. of Hoboken, NJ.  They also produced the closely related W521 baseball card set.  The W521 set shares the same checklist as the W519-1-1 set but all the images are reversed.  They are also numbered. 

You can see the Decalco Litho Co. of Hoboken NJ printed on the side of the cards on some occasions.  See the W519-1-1 Marquard at right.  Marquard and Sisler are the two that are found with the side writing usually, but I recently picked up a Rube Benton that also shows part of the side writing.  You can see it on my last blog post of recent pick ups here.

The Decalco Litho Co. started in Hoboken in 1908 under the name American Transfer Pictures & Printing Co.  It was later incorporated in 1918 as Decalco Litho Company, Inc and shortly thereafter printed these sets. 

Decalco Litho also produced a set of boxing cards.  These are fairly tough to come by and complete the set.  Below are a couple examples from the boxing set.  The Jack Britton and Jack Dempsey are pictured here.

The boxing set has boxers and wrestlers and has 20 cards in the set as well.  My supporter, Prewarcards.com, has a writeup about these here.  They are classified as W519/W521 as well.

W519 Boxers Britton and Dempsey

 

The boxing set comes in both corrected and reversed images and some color variations.  You can see all the examples on Adam Warshaw's website of boxing strip cards.  Some of the cards can also be found with the Decalco Litho of Hoboken, NJ typed on the side of the card. 

 



Enjoy the hobby all...it's a great one.

Recent Pick Ups

A couple of Rubes joined my collection recently.

I was very happy to have picked up these two W519-1-1s.  These are the black numbered versions of the W519s.  Type II's (W519-2) do not have numbers and are all blue backgrounds.  The W519-1-2s have blue numbers instead of black and are harder to find than the black number type I's. 

First up in Rube Benton who pitched for the NY Giants when this card was produced in 1920.

 

Next up in one of my favorite prewar players, HOFer Rube Marquard who was pitching for the Brooklyn Robins in 1920.

 

 

I hope you like these two new strip cards as much as I do.  The W519s don't show up as often as some of the other strip sets so I was happy to get these two.

 

Enjoy the hobby all...it's a great one.



Recent Pick Ups

I recently raised my Kraken number by two points with the addition of these two beauties.

Nothing crazy but I'm very excited to have finally picked up an E90-1 Rebel Oakes.  I've always considered this card one of the best looking cards in the hobby and a must have.  A true classic in my opinion.

 

I've always liked how Oakes' glove breaks the border at the top of the card.  Another tough card from the set, the Jerry Upp card, also has this characteristic.  Only on Jerry's card it's his butt that breaks the left border of the card.  Another classic card in my view as well.

 

The next one I picked up was this trimmed (at least I'm pretty sure it is as it's very short top to bottom and has a wavy bottom edge) Blankenship.  I like the solid blue background on this one. 

 

 

So what exactly is a Kraken number?  I can hear a bunch of you asking this question and feel I should explain.  The T206 set is affectionately known as "The Monster".  So in the caramel card world, the E90-1 set has been dubbed "The Kraken" by some collectors. 

 

A Kraken number is your score on a scale of points related to the level of difficulty of obtaining the different cards.  This is all explained, talked about, and collectors are reporting their scores in this thread on Net54Baseball.com here.  Below is the list of the points for each card that total 250 for a complete set. 

 

20 Joe Jackson

10 Tris Speaker
10 Honus Wagner (throwing)

7 Hugh Duffy
7 Mike Mitchell
7 Honus Wagner (batting)
7 Cy Young (Cleveland)

5 Fred Clarke (Pittsburgh)
5 Ty Cobb
5 Willie Keeler (red background)
5 Jake Stahl
5 Bill Sweeney (Boston)
5 Ed Walsh

4 Peaches Graham
4 Christy Mathewson
4 Eddie Plank
4 Cy Young (Boston)

3 Bob Bescher
3 Patsy Dougherty
3 George Gibson (back)
3 Harry Howell (wind up)
3 Ed Karger
3 Willie Keeler (throwing)
3 Addie Joss (throwing)
3 Nap Lajoie
3 Tommy Leach (throwing)
3 Hans Lobert
3 Larry McLean
3 Dots Miller (sunset)
3 Orval Overall
3 Dave Shean
3 George Stone (left hand showing)
3 Jerry Upp

1 each for the rest of the 88 cards

A complete set of 121 would thus be 250 points

 

My Kraken number is only 12 (will be 14 when I get the two cards I won in the recent Brockelman Auction) but I'm having fun collecting the set and seeing my number (slowly) go up.

 

Feel free to post your Kraken number in the comments and on Net54 if you have any.  We need more people reporting in their numbers!

 

I hope you liked my recent pick ups as much as I do.

 

Enjoy the hobby all...it's a great one!