Comparing a Horrors of War wrapper with a border to a HOW wrapper without border and with black bar, I got to wondering about how gum cards were wrapped in the distant past. Reviewing my collection from 1933 to the 1970s, I can deduce a few things, but that's not like really knowing something. The questions that came to mind are:

- Were wrappers in the early to mid thirties printed as single sheets? The image is generally pretty centered and all four edges are straight cut.

- Were wrappers like "Soldier Boys" that have a saw tooth edge on left and right torn from a roll of wrappers?

- Why do HOW wrappers come in both bordered and unbordered? Was this a transition period?

- The black bar that showed up, was this a guide for hand tearing at first and later triggered a machine to cut wrappers from a roll?

- When did they start with the 1 cent repeating wrapper like Jets Rockets and Spacemen?

- What companies were responsible for inovations in the wrapper printing, cutting and wrapping process?

I suppose I'm looking for a history lesson on how they did things in the golden years. Thanks - Jack

Jack: A couple of observations, but I'll leave it to the wrapper experts to chime in. My old buddy dealer Hugh Jones had a theory that the bordered HOW wrappers were made late in the game and were used when they were dumping two cards at a time. I'm pretty sure that many of these 30's wrappers were on a roll and were supposed to be cut on the black line for centering.

Chuck

I always assumed the repeating wrappers like Wild Man and Jets Rockets Spacemen were printed on a roll, like toilet paper, so only the tops and bottoms had to be cut (or miss-cut, as the case often was). But I would like to hear confirmation from someone who really knows.

I'm just a curious to find out about the wrapping machines. Specifically, I want to know when machines got good enough to wrap cards. I aways guessed that in the 1930s, the cards were hand wrapped, coz labor was so cheap and I don't know that machines were advanced enough. (It was only one card per wrapper anyhow.) But by the 1940s, machines had taken over. I know how younger folks tend to think their grand fathers were all cave men and not very smart, so maybe they started much sooner. Does anyone know for sure? Having wrapped tens of thousands of packs by hand, I know it's doable. I also know it's a royal pain in the bottom (and bottom line)!

This is a very interesting question. I am going to have to look at my wrappers this weekend. I am pretty sure that on the ones that have a black bar (and a quick scan of eBay wrappers indicates not many do) that the bar was used for making a centered cut. And did that help a machine make a good cut or a person make a good cut? I suspect the former as my recollection is that War Gum wrappers have these bars and those were made after the ones I just saw on eBay which were made in the 30's.

From my limited experience from working at Mars, Inc. in the 80's (and extrapolating); here's my 2 cents.

The "running" type wrappers had the black bar so that the wrapping machine "knew" where to cut the wrapper. The early machines did not have as much quality control ability as the newer machines.

Also, the Red Bar was used to "tell" the wrapping machine that an end of roll was approaching ant time to change rolls.

Here are some 30's examples:



R60 G-Men:


.....................Miscut............................................Miscut.......



....................Properly Cut.................................."Bordered" Wrapper


HOW "RED BAR":

Really exceptional information, guys! Thanks so much for sharing.

Hmm, if Mark's observations about the marking bar on the wrapper are correct (and I have no reason to believe he is wrong) this could give an idea when the machines took over at Gum, Inc. His G-Men wrapper came with and without bars for the machine, suggesting (not proving, but hinting) that they started out without machines to do the wrapping, and then went to machines during the course of that series. G-men started 1936 I believe, and I'd assume once they had the wrapping machines, they would use them on everything from then forward. It's hard to imagine any company having laborers wrapping 1 cent packs, but during the depression, people would probably work all day for cheap (50 cents?), whereas buying the new fangled machines during this time would be cost prohibitive to any but the biggest companies doing reliable volume (like Bowman/ Gum, Inc.). I'd also bet all the competition waited till after the depression before they caught up with Bowman's use of wrapping machines. This is all conjecture on my part, mind you, but the pieces seem to fit.

Reminds me of Bob & Ray's visit to the Great Lakes Paper Clip Company...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmahLN6_Ozw

Fantastic display Mark and that addresses the question very well. As for Kurt's comment, that is also what I was thinking, that the transition to the machine wrapping must have happened in the second half of the 30's. Now I wonder who invented that machine?

Black bars were apparently printed on wrappers for accurate cutting via an electronic eye - Fleer actually had a patent on this method which they originally used when printing their earlier bubble gum comics:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=AXRTAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA1&dq=2231735&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

From my research wrappers were printed on large rolls, then segmented into "toilet paper" style rolls and spooled on a wrapping machine.

Wow, what cool speculation and information. I went to the patent that Jeffshep referenced and then traced back to two other patents that Fleer had a hand in. I didn't make it all the way through the text, but Fleer was working on a registration mechanism for cutting wrappers from rolls as early as Feb. 1936.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=Vv1UAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA1&dq=2108767&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I've been collecting images of Horrors wrappers and, as a result of this discussion,I began looking at examples that aren't quite centered. I realized the roll wasn't restricted to the single variety type. I decided to figure out what order on the roll the four variations were printed. I came up with the answer that there is no set pattern. This doesn't make any sense to me, but, for example, variation #1 might show a bit of variation #3 or #2 above the image. I 'bout went crazy trying to make sense out of it. Maybe someone else can find the pattern. -Jack

This is certainly one of the most interesting posts in a long time,based on what I am most interested in!

With being a long time collector or wrappers/packs and the history of thereof, I have always wondered what happened in the 1930's with regards to packaging...Depending on the company and the type of wrapper, the process is difficult say.

Wrappers made of wax vs glassine makes for a different type of seal...with wax, heat alone would seal a pack but with glassine, a spot of corn syrup was used to keep the pack sealed, however this is only known in the 50's.

Here is a video link of me opening up a 1957 Topps pack at the Toronto Sports Card Expo in the spring ($1500 pack). This pack wrapper was a glassine one.

http://s431.photobucket.com/albums/qq37/BobbyB_photo/?action=view&current=1957pack_0001.flv

The servival rate of wax to glassine is quite a small percentage, glassine wrappers would tear so easily when opened whereas wax would have more resistance and strenth. A case in point are the first and second series of the 1933 Goudey Sport Kings. The first series wrapper was made of wax while the second series is made of glassine, thus finding a second series wrapper from this issue is very difficutlt while the first series are most certainly more common. Unfortunately, I do not see any form of residue on the glassine wrappers from this era.

Parkhurst Products of Canada on the other hand came into the market in the early 1950's, they chose to seal and hand package the cards in small boxes sealed like candy boxes until they graduated to a machine 3 year in. They used a row of heated wheels to seal their packs, all the way across the back, making for the greatest sealed way of packaging I have experienced, also making it easy to tell if someone tried to reseal.

Summary, I believe that in the 1930's that weren't packaging machines but they probably had a jig set up on a processing line and had workers sealing each in a process.

Jeff and Jack, great detective work and fascinating work. All my years in engineering school finally of some use...LOL. Anyway, this seems to confirm what we were surmising from the circumstantial evidence of looking at wrappers with and without the black bars: it appears that gum card companies started cutting wrappers with machines around 1936.

Great seeing that factory footage of the assembly line. I only wish it was some nonsport series of interest like Fight The Red Menace, instead of boring Hockey cards. The fact it had no sound was kinda neat too. Maybe we can add an old player piano score or something old timey sounding in the background.

Here is some information about automated wrapping machines from the Cowan Company in the late 1910's. I know we were talking about gum wrapping but if a Canadian company had automatic wrapping for Chocolate bars back then, I could only imagine that there were automated machines for wax packs too.

Congrats to Jeff & BobbyB!

Never ceases to amaze me, the stuff you guys dig out for the rest of us who are too busy, or is that too lazy?

Thanks much.

NEAT!