I recently purchased a book that contained 60-70 cards. In the lot of cards 4 of them had the Koester's back, 20ish of them were the same size and front design with blank backs, and 35 or so of them were made of the same paper(waxy like American Caramel actor cards) type but have a small white border around the edges making them slightly larger also with blank back.

Do you think the blanked back cards are from the same set? If not do you know the set?

Hey Greg,
The blank backed cards you describe are most likely from the Kromo Gravure Photo Co. of Detroit Michigan.

They issued several series of cards around 1917 that came in 50 card boxed sets. The cards themselves are devoid of any markings and are blank backed. They have the waxy feel as you describe.

They come in 3 varieties:

1) Photos with rounded corners (82 known):


2) Full bleed (51 known):


3) Photos with square corners (168 known):


Here is one of the boxes:


The sets were probably reissued again and again resulting in lots of variations.

Also, here is the D1 album: