Breaking Down the E92 Croft Candy and Croft Cocoa Cards

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Pre-War Cards

Two different Croft products have advertisements on the backs of E92 cards — and there’s a significant difference between them

The 1909 E92 candy card sets are among the more popular early candy cards. In all, there are four different sets using the E92 classification – Dockman, Nadja, Croft Candy, and Croft Cocoa.

While all four sets used the same images for players that appear in them (and these same images were also used in other popular early candy card sets), a major point of confusion is that the checklists are not identical. Some of the sets are larger/smaller than others. The most common E92 cards are the ones for Dockman and Sons but even those are not criminally available. After all, PSA has only graded a little more than 1,500 of them. But in terms of the four E92 sets, that is the most common one.

E92 Nadjas are there and, like other Nadja cards, these are pretty difficult to find. PSA’s only graded a little more than 300 of those.

And then you’ve got two types of Croft cards. The Croft and Allen Company made various products and the E92 cards can either be found with a Croft Candy advertisement or one for Croft Cocoa, which was bottled and also sold directly from their fountains at their Philadelphia location. Both are somewhat tough but the Croft Cocoa cards are really the headliner. Mostly.

Shown here are backs of both types. It should be pointed out that the Croft Candy cards can be found with an assortment of ink colors, including red, blue, and black. And for the sake of being complete here, the black cards are the easiest to find, followed by the blue ones, and then the red ones.

The Croft Candy backs have a Croft’s logo in the shape of a shield. The cocoa advertisement includes a picture of their bottled cocoa product with a mention that it was also served at their South 15th Street location in Philadelphia.

Now, an important distinction is that the red-backed Croft cards are exceedingly rare — certainly rarer than the Croft Cocoa cards as are the blue ones. But if considering the aggregate of the three Croft Candy card types together vs. the Croft Cocoa cards (which is what I’m doing here), the Croft Cocoa ones are definitively tougher to find. While more than 250 Croft Candy cards have been graded by PSA, the company has only graded about 100 of the Croft Cocoa cards.

So the Croft Cocoa cards are, in general, rarer. What does that do to the value?

Well, the E92 Croft Candy cards aren’t terribly cheap. Half-decent low-grade commons with those backs (the black ink ones) start at around $75 or so. Cards with blue or red ink backs will usually cost more. E92 Croft Cocoa commons generally start around $125 or $150.