L40 College Yell / Emblem Set Included Major Sports

Posted on December 28, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	L40 College Yell Emblem Leathers
Year	Unknown
Size	2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″
Images	Single-Color Ink
Type	Leather
Number in Set	24

L40 College Yell Emblem Overview

Many of the leathers produced by tobacco companies in the pre-war era didn’t focus on sports. Approximately half identified in the American Card Catalog were related to colleges, but most were not really sports-related. One exception to that was the L40 College Yell / Emblem Set.

This set included a variety of sports issues. Some depicted actual athletes while others included only mascots. There are several other college leather sets featuring logos, emblems, etc. The L40 set, however, depicted some actual athletes and that makes them generally more collectible by today’s standards.

Major sports identified in the set include:

Amherst Baseball
Bucknell Football
Chicago Baseball
Rutgers Football

Those leathers all show pictures of athletes. Some of the mascot cards include a picture of particular equipment as well. For example, the Harvard card shows a picture of a football and the Columbia issue features a basketball.

The leathers are in all sorts of colors and some have more than one variation. The Chicago card, for example, is found embossed in both silver and gold.

These shouldn’t be confused with other college leather issues. One way to distinguish between these and other collegiate issues is the rectangular frame around the images in the L40 series.