1909 W555 Strip Card Set and Checklist

Posted on October 6, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	W555 Strip
Year	1909
Size	1 1/4″ x 1 1/4″ (but varies by cut)
Images	Black and White
Type	Strip
Number in Set	68

W555 Strip Card Overview

The 1909 W555 strip card set includes small, black and white square pictures. As proved in a 2007 discovery, the cards are from the outsides of candy boxes from a Philadelphia candy producer named Jay Meyer. Essentially, that should actually make them E-Cards.

It is likely that Jefferson Burdick did not realize where they came from when he created the American Card Catalog and assigned a W-Card classification to this issue. That is even more likely given that Burdick called the producer/distributor ‘anonymous’ in his book.

Some of the pictures have been also used in other sets. For example, Ames’ card is from one his T206 cards. But where collectors will mostly recognize the pictures is in other early candy/caramel card sets. The cards are small, measuring only a little larger than 1″ on each side.

The set includes numerous big names and Hall of Famers, such as Chief Bender, Mordecai Brown, Frank Chance, Hal Chase, Eddie Cicotte, Ty Cobb, Clark Griffith, Hughie Jennings, Addie Joss, Willie Keeler, Nap Lajoie, Christy Mathewson, John McGraw, Eddie Plank, Joe Tinker, Honus Wagner, Rube Waddell, and Cy Young. The stars, obviously, are the more valuable cards. But even commons are relatively pricey starting around $50 or so.

Many typos of player names exist. The pictures may be familiar to some collectors as they appeared in other caramel and tobacco card sets.

An error also exists with a card featuring Cy Young. Young is named on one of the cards but it’s actually Irv Young that is pictured. The correction was later made as instead of ‘Cy Young’, some versions of the card simply say ‘Young.’ The Cy/Irv Young debacle is one that is found in other sets, too.

Here are pictures of all of the cards in the set.