CARDBOARDFILE
non-sport / Gum, Inc. Superman
72 cards
There are two 1940 Superman card issues and this is the second of them.
The first came in the spring of that year from the Leader Novelty Candy Co., a 36-card series printed on the backs of Superman Candy & Surprise boxes, perforated so a child could tear off a picture card and a premium coupon. That set is R146 in the American Card Catalog, and specialist sources place it before the set on this page. It is smaller, scarcer, and printed with almost no colour beyond red.
Gum, Inc. of Philadelphia followed in the autumn with the set catalogued as R145. Seventy-two cards, 2 and 1/2 by 3 and 1/8 inches, in full colour, sold in penny packs with a slab of Super Bubble Gum. It was announced on the backs of the second series of 1940 Play Ball baseball cards - Gum, Inc. made those too - and advertised in Superman comics that reached newsstands that November.
So this is not the first Superman card set. It is the one that mattered, and it is the one collectors chase: bigger, more colourful, better distributed, and the source of nearly every famous 1940 Superman card image.
The fronts are painted scenes of Superman intervening in a disaster - a train wreck, an avalanche, a mine collapse, a shark attack. The backs carry a description of the action, the card number, a black and white Superman design and an advertisement for the Supermen of America Club. Twelve of the images and stories were carried over from the earlier Leader Novelty series rather than drawn fresh.
The set splits in two. Cards 1 to 48 came first; 49 to 72 had a shorter print run and limited distribution in 1941. Collectors have said for decades that the high numbers are three to four times harder to find.
The population report puts a number on it, and the number is smaller than the folklore. Across all 72 cards PSA has recorded 7,763 copies: 6,139 from the low numbers and 1,624 from the high, which works out at 128 per card against 68. A low number has been submitted 1.89 times as often as a high number, not three or four.
But the split is absolute in a way the ratio does not convey. The least-recorded card in the first 48 has 103 copies. The most-recorded card in the last 24 has 81. Not one card crosses the line. Whatever happened at card 49, it happened to every card after it.
The other number worth sitting with is what the set produces at the top. Across 7,763 copies of 72 different cards, PSA has recorded six 9s - one each on cards 14, 36, 39, 50, 57 and 60 - and has never recorded a 10 for anything in the set.
That is what eighty-five years of children handling cards looks like. The usual damage is rubber band marks and the wear that comes from a stack carried in a pocket.
Nothing in this set is cheap and nothing in it grades well, so decide early which of those two facts you are optimising for.
Low numbers are the affordable entry. There are more of them, they turn up regularly, and a mid-grade example of a common low number is the realistic way most people own a 1940 Superman card.
High numbers, 49 to 72, cost a multiple of the low numbers and always have. If you are building the set, they are the project. Nobody assembles this set by accident.
Card 1 and card 72 are the keys - the first because it opens the set and carries the origin story, the last because it closes the high series. Both were handled more than anything else in the set and both are correspondingly hard.
Set your grade expectations to the set rather than to the money. PSA has never recorded a 10 and has recorded six 9s across the entire 72-card checklist. A PSA 5 here is a strong card. A PSA 3 or 4 is an ordinary, perfectly respectable example of a card printed in 1940 and carried in a child's pocket.
The whole set was reprinted in the 1980s, which is the main hazard on the open market: a clean, sharp, inexpensive 1940 Superman card should be treated as a reprint until the certificate says otherwise. Buy graded, and verify the certificate number with the grading company.
One thing to watch when comparing figures across sources. The Leader Novelty issue is also dated 1940 and is also catalogued as Superman, and the two sets use different card titles for the same artwork. A population or sales figure found elsewhere may belong to the other set.
And check the size before buying pages. At 2 and 1/2 by 3 and 1/8 inches these will not sit in a standard modern sleeve.