1910 Mello-Mint Set (E105)

Posted on October 3, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	E105 Mello Mint
Year	1910
Size	1 1/2″ x 2 5/8″
Images	Color
Type	Candy/Caramel
Number in Set	50

E105 Mello-Mint Overview

The 1910 E105 Mello-Mint set is one of the tougher E-card sets to acquire.

Fronts include color pictures with the player’s name and team. The back has a descriptive ad for Mello-Mint, a gum company. Backs are printed in green ink and state how the cards were distributed:

“This picture is one of the series of 50 base ball players, one of which is wrapped with each five cent package of Smith’s Mello Mint Gum, manufactured only by Texas Gum Company, Inc., Temple, Texas.”

That advertisement is unique not so much for its content but its layout. Despite the cards being mostly vertical on the front, the advertisement on the back was printed horizontally. One of the more notable features of this set is that the cards are printed on thinner card stock than most other series’. That thin stock makes it incredibly difficult to find these cards in great condition.

Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Cy Young, and Christy Mathewson lead the way in this rare set. in addition, the same pictures and players are also found in the E92 and E101 issues. But while the subjects are the same, the Mello Mint cards are undoubtedly much tougher to find. To date, PSA and SGC have combined to grade only a little more than 500 in all.

About Mello-Mint Gum

Mello-Mint was a brand of the Texas Gum Company. The company also produced other gum brands, including Tickle Chickle, Peerless Chips, and Domino. Often, the company would reference these brands in their advertisements.

Those advertisements described Mello-Mint gum as the perfect combination of mint and spearmint. Ads also described the gum as being all over the State of Texas. And as you might guess from the maker’s name and the advertising, the gum was produced in that state.