1909/1910 Juergens Butternut Bread Wheeling Stogies Pins Set and Checklist

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	Juergens Butternut Bread Wheeling Stogies Pins
Year	1909 or 1910
Size	1 1/4″ diameter
Images	Black and White
Type	Pins
Number in Set	1

1909/1910 Juergens Butternut Bread Wheeling Stogies Pins Overview

The 1909/1910 Juergens Butternut Bread pin set is a rare minor league issue featuring baseball players from the champions of the Central League, the Wheeling Stogies. Pins are similar in nature to the 1910 Morton’s Buster Brown Bread pin set and the 1910 Morton’s Pennant Winners Bread pin set that both featured major league baseball’s Detroit Tigers.

Only one pin from the set is known today – that of Bill Phillips, the team’s manager. While this might seem like it should be an issue featuring a complete set, that is not necessarily the case. The 1909 Bastian Gum pin ‘set’, for example, includes only one pin as well – that of manager John Ganzel.

The pins do not have the distinctive yellow border that those Morton’s pins did, but the layout is similar to the Pennant Winners set. The bread label, Juergens Butternut Bread, is printed around the edge of the pin at the top and the player picture is in the middle. The bottom includes a pennant with the city name broken up. ‘Whee’ is on the left with ‘Ling’ on the right and a logo, a bundle of cigars (stogies) is in the middle.

There has been some speculation as to the date of this issue, but it would seem to be either 1909 or 1910. First, the Stogies did in fact win the Central League championship in both 1909 and 1910. Second, as mentioned above, the set has remarkable comparisons to the 1910 Morton’s pin sets.

The pins, as the Morton’s pins were, were also produced by Whitehead & Hoag. Given the similarity in design, that should hardly be a surprise.