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.