Question for 1935 National Chicle experts...

elsnorto

Like many football collectors I have long coveted the 1935 National Chicle set and, with my nearing the end of some other projects, I am getting ready to go after a VERY low end set. So I decided to pick up one of the reprint sets from Larry Fritsch, replacing the reprints with the originals as my set progresses, using the reprints essentially as set fillers until I can complete the holy grail.

I received the reprint set and was surprised to find they were fairly inconsistent in size. I originally thought it was just poor cut quality, but when I inquired with Larry Fritsch they responded saying the originals were cut this way as well, implying the reprint set was consistent with the varying sizes of the originals. I am an absolute novice with regards to the nuances of this set, so I thought I would pose this to the community as I know there are a few people here very familiar with the 1935 National Chicle set.

Do the originals, in fact, vary (by as much as 1/8th of an inch) consistently? Which is to say the Shipwreck Kelley is always vertically larger than say the Dutch Clark as is the case in my reprint set? The Beckett Annual does not mention this, but some articles I have found indicate the card dimensions are approximates, thus implying they are not uniform.

Probably a moot point as I will be putting this set together slabbed and trusting in PSA to weed out any trimmed examples, but I thought I would ask out of curiosity if nothing else. Thanks in advance for any insight you all can lend on the topic.

Snorto~

WinPitcher

Snorto

Most issues from that era do have varying tolerences. I always heard that this set was no different.


Steve

djspann

Snorto -- I have generally not measured many Chicle football cards. Also, as it seems you will be doing, I collect mostly graded Chicles. The raw ones are far too risky, in my opinion, to pick up without seeing in person. The raw ones on eBay typically fall into 2 categories: fake/reprint, or highly overpriced. Of the ones that are overpriced, most are overgraded, and are therefore even more overpriced, so I've stuck mostly with graded Chicles.

Anyway, I looked through a bunch of Chicles tonight, maybe about 50, all PSA graded. I was a little bit surprised at the size variations, but generally, all of my cards are within 1/16" in either direction. I did find one example that was close to 1/8", maybe 3/32". Of the rest, most were either right on, or about 1/16" off. So, either I have about 10 trimmed cards out of 50 in PSA slabs, or there is some variation in the Chicle sizes. I'm not sure which is correct -- possibly a combination of the two.


Doug

djspann

Oh -- I forgot to mention -- I didn't see a correlation that any one particular card was generally larger or smaller than others. I even found one Dutch Clark to be about 1/16" shorter than another Dutch Clark. The specific example of Shipwreck Kelly being larger t/b than the Dutch Clark is not consistent with my PSA graded cards.


Doug