Three PR4 "Cracker Jack" Pins or are they?

These neat little pins are classified as PR4 and they date from 1930 to 1933.Napkin Doon (as in "Adventures of") showed off some graded beauties he came across at his LCS earlier this month. Those were very sweet. These metal pinbacks feature baseball players, presidents, actors/actresses and, according to an advertising piece I found, 'Indians, generals, animals and birds'. 

I had this post ready to go and included a little history of baseball-related Cracker Jack prizes when I stumbled across a couple of things on a card discussion forum that made me stop and re-think things. More of that in a minute.

First, these pins are not terribly expensive if you want to pick up some of the non-sports pins as I did. The Kit Carson and Wild Bill Hickok came from eBay as a single lot. They are not in pristine condition but I was certainly willing to pay the $10 to pick them both up. The Bill Terry was about $14 I think. It's in very nice condition for what it cost. Most of the other baseball pins I found from this set were more costly.  

Now I have always assumed, given that the are generally called 'Cracker Jack' pins, that they were prizes in boxes of Cracker Jack. Well, maybe they were and maybe they were not. Check out these two photos:

Above is a gum wrapper which shows the contents to be the pins and below an advertising piece featuring them and giving the issuing company as being General Gum, Inc. of Chicago.

Wikipedia makes no mention of the 'General Gum Co.' in relation to Cracker Jack. While CJ is always associated with the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the poster lists Chicago as the gum company's home that may just be happenstance. 

I guess there are a couple of possibilities. This auction house makes the casethat the pins may have never been Cracker Jack prizes at all. Or, given that the gum company was in Chicago, the manufacturer may have licensed/sold the pins to both General Gum and Cracker Jack.

I don't know the actual facts of all this, and I don't really care much. I just like the pins and am happy to have a couple.  The picture below shows two of them along with a U.S. Quarter for perspective. 

1956 Harvey Haddix

Here is the 1956 Harvey Haddix I managed to score in a contest run by Napkin Doon a week or so ago. It was called the 'Big Fun' contest and the idea was that the participants were allowed to choose an unseen prize. The following participants in turn could 'steal' a previously revealed prize or chose another unseen one. It was a lot like the Christmas gift exchange idea my sister-in-law railroaded down everyone's throat about ten years ago.

Having drawn the #10 slot I was able to check out nearly the entire 'field' of prizes and when the Haddix card was revealed I zeroed in on it. Then when I took it I had to sweat out one or two other picks by guys who had had their prize 'stolen'. It was big fun. Almost as much fun as seeing most of my extended family pouting about losing a waffle maker to Uncle Ralph in 2007.

The Haddix card is graded and in a case (which is why it's not as 'sharp in the scan as it really is) but I'll be freeing it here before too long. Cardboard needs to breathe, dammit!

BTW, one of the guys who was kicked behind me because of losing his prize was able to pick up a 1962 Frank Robinson All Star card. If that one had been available when I chose I'd have been in a serious quandary. The '62 Robby is quite a cool card. But I love my Haddix. Look at that grin.