1911-14 D304 Martens Bakery Set and Checklist

‘It’s In The Details’

Title D304 Martens Bakery
Year 1911-14
Size 1 3/4″ x 2 1/2″
Images Color
Type Bakery
Number in Set
25

1911-14 D304 Martens Bakery Overview

Martens.jpgd304-01-bakerWhile the D304 set is generally characterized as the General Baking Company set, theirs are hardly the only advertising backs on this issue. In all, five backs, including General Baking, Brunners, Butter Krust, Martens Bakery, and Weber Bakery distributed these cards as well.

The fronts of the cards across the various sets were all the same. They featured color lithographs of players and like other issues of the same era, had a white border with the player’s name printed at the bottom.

The Martens Bakery cards can be differentiated by the advertisement on the back. The top states that the cards were compliments of Martens Bakery while the bottom says they are wrapped in Butter-Krust and Little General Bread. These were a little different than some other D304 issues since they included the ad for a Bakery and not a specific brand of bread.

It should be noted that some cards in the D304 series have the team name blacked out. That was likely to denote players that changed teams during the time period the cards were printed. Their new teams are not printed but by blacking out the old teams, the cards were made a bit more current.

In terms of rarity, Weber Bakery, Butter Krust, and Martens are easily the most difficult to find. Brunners is by far the most common.

1911-14 D304 Martens Bakery Bread Checklist

While 25 cards are known in the entire D304 series (combined, among the five different backs), all 25 cards below have not been found with a Martens Bakery back. I have presented all 25 cards in the D304 series below since they could all theoretically have been printed with a Martens Bakery back. To date, though, not all of these have been found with that advertisement.

  1. Home Run Baker
  2. Jack Barry
  3. George Bell
  4. Chief Bender
  5. Frank Chance
  6. Hal Chase
  7. Ty Cobb
  8. Eddie Collins
  9. Otis Crandall
  10. Sam Crawford
  11. Johnny Evers
  12. Art Fletcher
  13. Buck Herzog
  14. Kelly
  15. Nap Lajoie
  16. Rube Marquard
  17. Christy Mathewson
  18. Fred Merkle
  19. Chief Meyers
  20. Marty O’Toole
  21. Nap Rucker
  22. Art Shafer
  23. Fred Tenney (misspelled Tenny)
  24. Honus Wagner
  25. Cy Young

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