The 1914 and 1915 Cracker Jack sets are similar enough that Jefferson Burdick assigned both the same E145 designation in his American Card Catalog. Indeed for many Cracker Jack cards the only clues as to year of issue come from the card backs, inverted in 1915 and with denser text on the bottom that includes mail-in offers. For the players common to both sets, even the same card numbers and bios are used across years.
Another key difference is the size of the sets. The 1914 checklist has 144 cards while the 1915 checklist has 176. Unrelated to the crosswalk, a quick of the 1914 set is that it includes two different cards of Chicago Whale Rollie Zeider. Presumably, card 116 was issued as a second-series correction of card 60, which showed Zeider in a uniform he last wore June 1, 1913.
Unsurprisingly, the 1915 set would retain the second Zeider card but not the first, making Zeider’s card 60 one of only five cards from the 1914 checklist not to hold its spot, including numbering, in 1915.
Like Zeider, the other subjects on the 1914-only list have good reason for losing their spot. Lord barely played in 1914 and didn’t have a roster spot in 1915 until late May when he jumped to the Federal League. Cashion similarly saw scant usage in 1914 and by 1915 was toiling in the American Association. As for Chance, he resigned as manager of the Yankees in late 1914 and would not return to the majors until 1923. As for Callahan, the Sox moved him from his field general job to the front office after the 1914 season, making him an uninteresting subject for a baseball card in 1915.
The result is that the 1915 set included 37 new subjects, the five cards that replaced the 1914-only issues and the 32 “high numbers” from 145-176.
Returning to the 1915 set’s 139 repeated subjects, eleven appeared with new teams. In the case of Nap Lajoie and Sherry Magee, artwork was revised minimally to reflect the updates. In all other cases, artwork remained the same, even when cap and jersey identifiers from the previous team were quite prominent.
Here is the complete list of all subjects appearing on new teams in the 1915 set.
The case of Hall of Fame pitcher Rube Marquard is an unusual one in that he never pitched for the Brooklyn Tip Tops, the team assigned to his 1915 card. However, he did sign with the club in December 1914. The only problem was he was already under contract with the New York Giants, so the move never happened. That said, the Cracker Jack card may have been prophetic in two ways.
First, the artists left Marquard in his Giants uniform, which proved accidentally correct for the bulk of the 1915 campaign. Second, Marquard did end up finishing the season with a Brooklyn club. It just wasn’t the Tip Tops.
Apart from players who changed teams (or at least were thought to have), the only other significant update between the 1914 and 1915 sets came with the card of Christy Mathewson, which curiously switched from an action pose in 1914 to a portrait in 1915.
For collectors interested in pursuing the similarities and differences across the two Cracker Jack sets further, here is my Google Sheet. Let me know if you find anything interesting.
