1912 C46 Imperial Tobacco

Card 56 - Robert Wells

---

In Jefferson Burdick's American Card Catalog, the letter "C" was designated for Canadian tobacco issues, most of which were issued prior to World War One. Most of the sets included featured hockey and lacrosse players as well as general subjects, but C46 was the only major set of baseball players. The set was one of several of the era to feature minor league players. The players included in the set were in the International League, which -- as its name implies -- had teams in both the United States and Canada. While the International League is still in existence today as a triple-A league, 1912 was its first season under that name after the old Eastern League collapsed. Despite being a Canadian-issued set, only two of the league's eight teams were located north of the border. Teams in the league were located in Montreal and Toronto, Canada and Buffalo, Newark, Baltimore, Jersey City, Providence and Rochester. While about three-quarters of the players would make major league clubs, many are better known to collectors by virtue of appearing in the T206 and T205 sets as well.

Measuring 1 1/2" by 2 5/8" like most tobacco issues of the day, C46 cards are a little more elaborately designed than better-known sets. Resembling a plaque, the black-and-white player picture is displayed in a oval shape framed by a wooden slab complete with graphic "edges." The photo has a baseball bat designed to look as if it runs diagonally beneath the photo, with a fielder's glove at the top right and a baseball to the lower right. Below the photo is an oval-shaped "nameplate" with his last name.

Card backs are very basic compared to other tobacco issues. The player's last name appears at the top, followed by a short write-up of his accomplishments. At the very bottom of the card are the words "Baseball Stars" and the card number. One of the biggest differences from almost every other tobacco card set is the lack of any advertising for the company that issued them; this lack of identity not only gives newer collectors trouble trying to figure out what they are but also has caused some collectors to ask whether they were actually issued by Imperial Tobacco.

There are ninety cards in the set. While none of the cards is all that scarce relative to other cards in the set, there are some factors that affect completion. First, two of the players ("Iron Joe" McGinnity and Joe Kelley) are Hall of Famers. Kelley -- shown in street clothes on his card -- has his name misspelled as "Kelly" and is sometimes confused with Jack Kelley, another player in the set. Chick Gandil would eventually become involved in the 1919 Black Sox scandal and is widely collected because of that. Other notables include Luther "Dummy" Taylor, who is often pointed out as a player whose deafness led to the practice of umpires using hand signals and Jack Dunn, who was instrumental in bringing Babe Ruth to Baltimore as a rookie a couple years later. William O'Hara and Ray Demmitt are remembered for their having difficult T206 cards. In addition to competition from specialty collectors, there is a combination that makes a C46 set a little more difficult than expected: between the age of these cards, their foreign origin and the fact that some don't often identify them correctly due to the lack of a back advertisement, they sometimes take time to show up in the marketplace. Working on the set takes a little bit of patience.

Card 77 - Joe McGinnity (Back)

C46 Imperial Tobacco

1.    William O'Hara
2.    James McGinley
3.    Frenchy Le Claire
4.    John White
5.    James Murray
6.    Joe Ward
7.    Whitey Alperman
8.    Natty Nattress
9.    Fred Sline
10.   Royal Rock
11.   Ray Demmitt
12.   Butch Schmidt
13.   Samuel Frock
14.   Fred Burchell
15.   Jack Kelley
16.   Frank Barberich
17.   Frank Corridon
18.   Doc Adkins
19.   Jack Dunn
20.   James Walsh
21.   Charles Handford
22.   Dick Rudolph
23.   Curt Elston
24.   Carl Sitton
25.   Charlie French
26.   John Ganzel
27.   Joe Kelley
28.   Benny Meyers
29.   George Schirm
30.   William Purtell
31.   Bayard Sharpe
32.   Tony Smith
33.   John Lush
34.   William Collins
35.   John Phelan
36.   Edward Phelps
37.   Rube Vickers
38.   Cy Seymour
39.   Shadow Carroll
40.   Jake Gettman
41.   Luther Taylor
42.   Walter Justis
43.   Robert Fisher
44.   Fred Parent
45.   James Dygert
46.   Johnnie Butler
47.   Fred Mitchell
48.   Heine Batch
49.   Michael Corcoran
50.   Edward Doescher
51.   George Wheeler
52.   Elijah Jones
53.   Frank Truesdale
54.   Fred Beebe
55.   Louis Brockett
56.   Robert Wells
57.   Lew McAllister
58.   Ralph Stroud
59.   Vernon Manser
60.   James Holmes
61.   Rube Dessau
62.   Fred Jacklitsch
63.   Stanley Graham
64.   Noah Henline
65.   Chick Gandil
66.   Tom Hughes
67.   Joseph Delehanty
68.   George Pierce
69.   Bob Gaunt
70.   Edward Fitzpatrick
71.   Wyatt Lee
72.   Rube Kissinger
73.   William Malarkey
74.   William Byers
75.   George Simmons
76.   Daniel Moeller
77.   Joseph McGinnity
78.   Jack Hardy
79.   Bob Holmes
80.   William Baxter
81.   Chester Spencer
82.   Bradley Kocher
83.   Al Shaw
84.   Joseph Yeager
85.   Tony Carlo
86.   William Abstein
87.   Tim Jordan
88.   Dick Breen
89.   Lew McCarty
90.   Harry Curtis