1910 E90-3 American Caramel Chicago Cubs/White Sox Set and Checklist

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	E90-3 American Caramel
Year	1910
Size	1 1/2″ x 2 3/4″
Images	Color
Type	Candy/Caramel
Number in Set	20

E90-3 American Caramel Overview

The E90-3 American Caramel set was a team issue covering players from both the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox. It was the third and final set designated as E90 by Jefferson Burdick in the American Card Catalog.

Cards included a player portrait on the front along with his name, position, and either Cubs or White Sox, depending on the player’s team. Backs were slightly different than the E90-1 and E90-2 American Caramel sets since they did not state that there were 100 cards in the set. Instead, the backs stated they were manufactured by the American Caramel Company in Chicago (E90-1 and E90-2 stated Philadelphia) and the ‘100 subjects’ line was replaced with ‘All the Star Players.’

Several Hall of Famers are included in the set but the most desired ‘regular’ card is that of Chick Gandil. Gandil was a member of the 1919 White Sox team that had eight members banned for their part in the World Series gambling scandal.

The set is also home to a unique card – that of Solly Hofman. At least one known version has either a misspelling or a print error that causes the card to read, ‘Hofnlan.’ Some collectors feel the card was legitimately typed ‘Hofnlan’ while others believe that the ‘m’ was angled upward and simply misprinted. For the record, the latter misprinted ‘m’ is how the card is categorized in the Standard Catalog.

This was the second team issue of the three E90 American Caramel sets. The E90-2 issue release focused on the Pittsburgh Pirates, the 1909 World Series champions. A total of 20 cards were in the E90-3 issue.

Here’s a more in-depth look at this small, unique set (along with the E90-2 set).

Joe Tinker ‘Variation’

Finally, the set is often listed as having one card with a background color variation.

The card of Hall of Famer Joe Tinker can be found with either a blue or green background. Tinker’s blue background is by far the tougher of the pair. As of early 2021, PSA has graded 23 of the green background cards but only six Tinker cards with the more elusive blue background.

However, it is likely that the blue cards were not intentional and are simply the result of cards not having sufficient enough yellow ink to make the background green. That is based on the fact that other cards in the set have occasionally been spotted with color variations. Additionally, many of the green background Tinker cards have varying shades of green, due to different ink levels of particular colors.

Here’s a closer look at the Tinker variation subject.