A fun oddity to keep an eye for are the “Big Factory 30s”. Certain poses from the 150-350 series can be found with a large “30” right in the middle at the bottom of the back, like this Tannehill above. It appears that the large “30” was used to differentiate sheets of Sweet Caporal 350 factory 30 from Sweet Caporal 350 factory 25, and vice versa.
There have not been any of these “Big Factory Numbers” found on Sweet Caporal 150 backs that I know of. My guess is there were some problems in the print shop during 150 series production that lead to them adding these large numbers to the sheets for the 350 series, so that the process of getting them out to the correct factories would run more smoothly. This article focuses on the Big Factory 30s, mainly because we have more data about them. There are 22 different poses that have been found with a “Big Factory 30”, while I only know of two players who have been found with a “Big Factory 25” (Ames portrait and Steinfeldt portrait).
Here are the 22 poses which have been found with Sweet Caporal 350 “Big Factory 30s”. I expect that more will be discovered, but for now this is the known checklist. Thank you to Erick Summers for keeping track of these over on the net54 forum.
- Ames (portrait)
- Beaumont
- Clarke (portrait)
- Cobb (bat on shoulder)
- Dahlen (Brooklyn)
- Dooin
- Durham
- Gilbert
- Hemphill
- Johnson (portrait)
- Jones, Fielder (portrait)
- Keeler (with bat)
- Killian (pitching)
- Mathewson (portrait)
- McGraw (no cap)
- Merkle (portrait)
- Overall (portrait)
- Seymour (batting)
- Spade
- Steinfeldt (portrait)
- Tannehill (“L” on front)
- Wagner (bat left)
Erick and others have been keeping track of these oddities for the last few years in this thread on net54baseball.com. If you have or know of any Sweet Caporal 350s with Big Factory Numbers at the bottom (either 25 or 30) please stop by that thread and add your card or scan to the list.
For the most part, each of these checklist entries represents a unique card. However, some of the above poses have been found more than once. I have seen three different Steinfeldts for instance. Because not everyone knows about these cards, there are probably quite a few of them out there that have not been noticed yet. Often the top of the “30” is just barely visible, and doesn’t look like much more than a bit of red ink. This is another reason why these cards tend to fly under the radar.
