1937 Kellogg’s Pep Sports Stamps Set (F273)

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	F273 Kellogg’s Pep Sports Stamps
Year	1937
Size	1 1/8″ x 1 3/4″
Images	Color
Type	Food
Number in Set	90

F273 Kellogg’s Pep Sports Stamps Overview

Kellogg’s produced a series of collectible sports stamps in 1937, distributing them in packages of their Pep Cereal brand products.

Four stamps were included to each sheet and the set included various sports celebrities, including both football and baseball stars. Other sports represented in the set included boxing, tennis, golf, swimming, aviation, and auto racing. Baseball was a focal point but certainly not the only big deal. In fact, none of the panels included more than one baseball player.

A total of 90 were in the set and given that each panel included four stamps, six had to be double-printed. Each box of cereal included only one panel so that meant you had to buy an awful lot of cereal just to have a chance at finishing a set – which was obviously Kellogg’s goal.

Full color images are printed against a solid colored background to produce the picture on the front and the athletes’ names are on the bottom.

Today, you’ll most commonly encounter these individually cut and removed from the sheets. However, a good number of uncut sheets are also available.

F273 Kellogg’s Pep Sports Stamps Backs, Sheets, and Album

Collectors were encouraged to save the stamps and then put them into a special album produced by the company. The back of a sheet of four stamps included the message that collectors could mail in ten cents and a Kellogg’s Pep Cereal box top for the album. Each of these sheets of four stamps was actually advertised by Kellogg’s as a ‘set’ and designated a specific number. For example, Set No. 15 included Bronko Nagurski, Lew Fonseca, Harry Cooper, and Jess Willard.

Because the message spanned the entire sheet and was not on each individual stamps, depending on the placement of the stamp when separated, only a portion of the text is on the back. While most athletes appeared only on a specific sheet, a few such as football star Red Grange and baseball great Tris Speaker, were on more than one.

In addition to the places for collectors to save the stamps, the book also included five different miniature board games of sorts to provide ‘endless pleasure’ as indicated on the back. One of those games was a baseball game that has miniature game pieces, as seen below. These could be considered by some to be a sort of card strip.

F273 Kellogg’s Pep Stamps Checklist

There are 90 stamps in the entire set and more than 1/3 are baseball and football players. A total of 18 from each sport were included in the set and below is the complete checklist of all cards. Baseball and football cards are denoted.