1911-14 D304 General Baking Set

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Keys For Collectors

• One of the most attractive baking and bread baseball card issues 
• Larger in size than the other tobacco and caramel issues of the era 
• Issued with five various back advertisements, including General Baking, Brunner’s Bread, ButterKrust, Weber Bakery and Martins Bakery 
• Loaded with popular Hall of Famers, including Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie, Cy Young and Christy Mathewson 
• Due to the popularity and relative scarcity, the cards of the big name Hall of Famers are quite expensive
• PSA has only graded on average, roughly 24 cards of each player in the 25-card set 

D304 General Backing – Five Different Back Variations

D304 Brunners Bread Back

D304 Martens Bakery back

D304 Butter Krust back

D304 Weber Bakery back

D304 General Baking back

D304 Summary

Issued from 1911 to 1914 in loaves of bread, the D304 set is viewed as one one of the more popular baking/bread sets.  The D304 set is filled with hall of famers, including Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Cy Young and Christy Mathewson.  While not impossible to locate, the cards are tough to find, with PSA only having graded on average roughly 24 cards of each player. 

The Cobb from the set is visually the standout, while the other player drawings have a good resemblance to the player in question but not quite like the Cobb. The Cobb is probably one of my favorite cards of all time and is one of the hobby’s most valuable baseball cards of all time. The card is worth over $20,000 (dependent on the back) in even Poor to Good condition: notably, PSA has graded less than 30 of the D304 Cobb card.

Five different bread back advertisements were issued. Some back variations are much tougher to track down, notably Martens, Weber, and General Baking. Brunners and Butter Krust tend to be far and far easier to find. 

While there are 25 players in the set, there are five variations which include the team name blacked out of players that were traded.  These players include Frank Chance, Hal Chase, Otis Crandall, John Evers and Charles Herzog.   Here’s a Frank Chance with his team name blacked out:

D304 Frank Chance with team name blacked out

I will admit, that a few of the player illustrations look a bit cartoonish.  The Nap Lajoie card is one.  Did the same artist that drew the Cobb likeness also illustrate this picture?  

I like the colors in the Johnny Evers card from the set.  One other note, unlike many of the tobacco and caramel issues from the era, these images were not re-used across any other baseball set.

I also wish the Wagner from the set looked a bit more like Honus Wagner, but so be it, still a cool card:

Search For D304 Cards on eBay

D304 Current Card Values

	Poor (PSA 1)	Good (PSA 2)
J. Frank Baker	$600	$800
Jack Barry	$400	$500
George Bell	$400	$500
Charles Bender	$600	$800
Frank Chance	$450	$800
Frank Chance (team Blacked Out)	$500	$900
Hal Chase	$450	$800
Hal Chase (team Blacked Out)	$500	4900
Ty Cobb	$10,000	$20,000
Eddie Collins	$700	$900
Otis Crandall	$350	$400
Otis Crandall (team Blacked Out)	$400	$500
Sam Crawford	$500	$800
John Evers	$500	$900
John Evers (team Blacked Out)	$650	$1,000
Authur Fletcher	$350	$400
Charles Herzog	$350	$400
Charles Herzog (team Blacked Out)	$400	$500
M. Kelly	$350	$400
Napoleon Lajoie	$1,000	$1,500
Rube Marquard	$700	$1,000
Christy Mathewson	$1,200	$2,000
Fred Merkle	$500	$700
Chief Meyers	$500	$700
Marty O’Toole	$350	$400
Nap. Rucker	$350	$400
Arthur Shafer	$350	$400
Fred Tenny (Tenney)	$500	$600
Honus Wagner	$1,900	$4,000
Cy Young	$1,000	$2,000

How To Identify A D304 Counterfeit

eBay is littered with D304 counterfeits.  And like many other popular counterfeit cards, there are listings on eBay which are aptly described as reprints…and those that are being sold by outright scammers. 

As an example, here’s a listing for a D304 Cobb reprint, that is advertised as such. 

A reprinted D304 Cobb 

D304 Reprint Back

Here’s a real Weber bakery back.  It’s clear that the paper is lighter in comparison to the fake one.

An authentic Weber Bakery D304 back

Here’s one example and if you want to look at this seller’s username on eBay, I’ve seen many other similar cards being sold as real that were fake—so buyer beware.

 

An artificially aged D304 Mathewson fake

A fake D304 back

Now here’s a real Mathewson with a real back.  A few obvious things on this one to help you out. 

Take a look at Mathewson’s red sleeve. See how on the real one below, there’s some missing color near the uniform? On the fake above, it’s entirely red. Also, on the back of the fake above, we can see the little wrinkles that are consistent with soaking—aka artificial aging. 

You can read more about that here: https://allvintagecards.com/detecting-counterfeit-vintage-cards/

In addition, if we look at the back of the authentic D304 card below, we can see consistent print, although on the fake above the print is really bold and dark–just a completely different darkness to the font. 

A real D304 Brunners back

D304 Cards for Sale on eBay