Seldom-seen card type, mirroring the W515 strip card issue, yet
containing Fleer advertising on the card's reverse. 120 different cards are believed to exist, since the back states that
consumers can collect the complete set of 120 cards. However, according to researcher Anson Whaley, all of the
cards have yet to be discovered. In fact, only a relatively small
number of cards are believed to have been found to date.
The images are
the same as the W515 strip card issue and of the 60 baseball players with known cards in the W515 card set, 26 were eventually inducted into the Hall of Fame. However, in addition to the baseball cards in that set,
there are non-baseball cards as well. This theoretically leaves 60 more non-baseball subjects out of the
120-cards in the E241 set.
Jefferson Burdick himself gave this 1923 Fleer set a catalog number of E241 in the American Card Catalog, as it is a Caramel/Candy card and not simply a strip card. These cards pre-date Fleer's first baseball issue by more than
three decades and pre-date the company's "Cops and robbers" non-sports
issue by twelve years. Very little else is known about the issue other
than the fact that they are exceedingly difficult to find.
PSA has graded a total of 6 different cards from the entire set, while SGC has graded a total of 11. Between the two companies and 17 total cards, however, only 13 different players are represented. To say these cards are scarce is an understatement.
Presented here is card #37 from the set, featuring New York outfielder "Whitey" Witt. Centering is east on the canvas, though corners and edges are uncommonly nice for a strip card. Some soiling and light surface abrasions on the reverse keep the card from grading even higher than it already has. Regardless of the grade, though, the scarcity of this issue far outweighs any cosmetic flaws on this example.
PSA has only ever graded 2 total
examples of this 1923 Fleer E241, with NONE receiving a higher grade than the VG 3 offered here of "Whitey" Witt.