An Early Mention of Baseball Card Flipping

While going through some old files in my computer, I came across this little tidbit:

There was an article by Stewart Culin in the Journal of American Folklore dated 1891 entitled "Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y."

As he explained the relatively new game of "pictures" he explained:

"This game is a recent invention, and is played with the small picture cards
which the manufacturers of cigarettes have distributed with their wares for
some years past. these pictures, which are nearly uniform in size and
embrace a great variety of subjects, are eagerly collected by boys in
Brooklyn and the nearby cities, and form an article of traffic among them."

This is probably one of the earliest explanations of what later generations called "flipping." Much earlier, there was a different game called "penny pitching," which had similar rules and is probably as old as minted coins.

Part of me wonders if the 14-year old boys of 1891 got a kick out of Jack Glasscock's name.

Q&A

Occasionally, I share questions sent to me from readers and visitors to my website. Here's a neat one from last week from a visitor named Steve:

Q: "I have two Gold Coin Chewing Tobacco cards with the first design.  They are Flint, catcher, Chicago and Clarkson, pitcher, Chicago.  They are both encased in plastic covers.  Can you tell me the value of these or where I might find out this info?"

(Here's a example of a "first design" card from my site)

 

(This is one of the three possible backs from the set)

A:

You can find some basic info about the set from my Vintage Baseball Cards website, but one thing you won't find there is a price. For that, here's a link to the set description from Old Cardboard, which says a common in VG condition can fetch about $145. That covers your Flint card, but the card you have of John Clarkson will be much more valuable since he is a Hall of Famer.

Buchner Gold Coin cards feature generic artwork rather than genuine photos, which makes them less sought-after than other sets. That said, there are enough collectors of 19th Century material that you'll likely get a decent amount if you are looking to sell them.

All of this info is assuming that "encased in plastic" means that they're either in the holder of a third-party grader (which will help you get a good price) or a screw-down holder.

Q&A

Through my website and my official position as the "Card Info guy" for the OBC group, I get a steady stream of emails, some of which end up here in the Q&A feature I have on this blog most Fridays.

A lot of the emails are simply asking about how much their cards are worth, and most of them are missing important things, like years of issue, card numbers and condition (the most important part). Sometimes, however, a picture is added to the email that is really helpful.

I recently opened this email from a lady named Nancy:

"Looking for the value of this card, for a friend."

And this was the picture attached to the email:

I didn't have anything to add, but thanks to my network of trading and collecting friends, I happen to know a collector of this type. So I asked her for info and learned a lot more about something I'd never known about.

While many of us are familiar with the All-American Girls' Professional Baseball League that was active from World War Two into the 1950s thanks to the 1992 film A League of Their Own, it's not as well known that there have been all-female baseball teams -- sometimes organized into what were known as "Bloomer leagues" -- for as long as baseball has been a sport.

The image shows what is known as the "Franklin" team after the manager's name that appears on the left side. The right side gives one of the earliest certain dates that can be given to pictures like this. However, there isn't much else known about the team, since no city or state is given.

This card is commonly referred to as a CDV (short for carte de viste), which are larger pictures featuring a studio photo. They are also called "cabinet" cards due to their larger size. In many ways, they're similar to the professionally-made studio photos from the late 1800s and early 1900s that are now cherished keepsakes among many families (my wife has one of her grandmother and great-grandparents that was taken in Russia before they came to America). Often placed onto heavy cardboard, these pictures could behave words printed onto them and were occasionally used to advertise businesses that sponsored local teams.
 

It's probably the most common of the "Bloomer girls" cards from before 1900, which gives the sense that it may have been issued in a larger city like New York, Philadelphia or Boston. Even though it's easier to find than any other 19th-century ladies' baseball photo card, it will likely set you back several hundred dollars on the open market.

Another Three Sets Added...

This morning, I have three more set descriptions added to my main website as part of the effort to help fill in the missing (some may say blatantly) pieces that have been in long need of adding.

Last week, I did Allen & Ginter sets, and this time I focused on Old Judge:

N172 Old Judge set (click to see)

Before there was a T206 set, the Old Judge set was "The Monster." There are more than 500 players, 2,300 total poses and several subsets that have been keeping collectors busy since they first arrived back in 1887. The subsets are a topic I'll need to revisit on this blog in the future.

However, they weren't the first Old Judge cards.

N167 Old Judge (Click to see)

There was a series of cards that came out in 1886 featuring players from the New York Giants team (1885 was the first year they used the name "Giants"). There are 14 cards known, and they're very scarce. Also, they were printed on inferior cardboard, which doesn't help condition-wise.

Finally, there were these large-size cards:

N173 Old Judge Cabinets (Click to see)

These were available as premiums through Goodwin & Co. In exchange for 20 coupons and a quarter, a consumer would get a large-sized version of the photos used in N172 cards. It's not known how different examples of them are out there, since it required a lot of cash (remember, a quarter was quite a bit of money then) and and awful lot of smoking to accumulate these in 1888-'89.

So, I've finally placed Old Judge cards on my site about a decade after I first told myself to do it. I do have some more sets to add, and will continue to share them here as I get them set up.

Three New Sets Added to My Website

I've been really bad.

My first duty here has been to build a reference site devoted to vintage baseball cards. And my website, which I've slowly been working on since 2000, has done that for the most part. From my first pages covering 1950s Topps and Bowman sets, I went back, hitting the 1930s gum sets and getting the major T-series sets in there as well. Then, I've filled in whenever I've had the time, info and an image.

However, there's always been some really obvious shortcomings with the site. The biggest one...is the lack of stuff from the 19th Century. While I realize that there aren't always going to be people looking for it, I know it's missing. I have added exactly three set descriptions to the site for sets from before 1900 in the past 10 years.

1895 Mayo Cut Plug (N300) was the first. It was added sometime in 2001. Then came N162 Goodwin Champions later that year. Finally, I added Buchner Gold Coin later on when I was given some terrific info about the set. But that's been all.

However, there's been no A&G sets, not even after I made a mental note to make them -- back in 2006 -- so I can capitalize on Topps bringing back the name. I need to do the same thing with Gypsy Queen, for the same reason. Finally, the "Big Daddy" of the N cards...Old Judge...is missing as well.

And what have I been doing all this time? Staying in the 1970s...keeping it in the Topps monopoly era...reminiscing about not being able to find a single 1986 Donruss card where I grew up. This is a vintage cards blog, and I've really lost sight of some of the truly great stuff out there that the vintage world offers collectors.

Well, that changes today. I've now placed three new set descriptions on my website:

N28 Allen & Ginter

This set was the first of two 50-card sets that featured athletes from several different sports. 10 of them were baseball players (6 of those went to Cooperstown), which has made this a very popular set over the years. Of course, the artwork doesn't detract from that fact a bit.

N29 Allen & Ginter

This was the second 50-card set, and this one covered a wider variety of sports. Yes, the big names of the N28 set are gone ("Wild Bill" Cody, Annie Oakley, John L. Sullivan), and the baseball players aren't quite the same level -- six players, but only one Hall of Famer -- but there's quite a variety here. There are runners, walkers, cyclists, hammer throwers, swimmers, pole vaulters, high jumpers, even a tricyclist.

As a premium, Allen & Ginter went and turned those cards into these:

N43 Allen & Ginter

Some of the collectors of modern A&G cards will recognize this design as the same one used for "box toppers" which may seem cool but also might get them to understand that Topps really didn't have any new ideas with the way they set up the gimmicks, either.

I'm not really big on resolutions for New Years, but I really need to make sure I explore the pre-Topps era some more. I need to start pulling out my oldest cards and showing them off. I need to start adding more set descriptions to my website. I also need to finish writing that damned book I've started too many times.

Yes, that's right. I'm writing a book about vintage cards. And I'll have it in a format where you can load it to a Kindle or an iPad and take it to a show with you. Or download it to your computer and have a reference file. As I get closer to getting it done, I'll share more about it.

In any case, whatever new sets get added to the site, I'll share them here, as I always do. I'm just not looking forward to writing out that checklist for Old Judge, though.

Hopefully, this blog should be fired up for 2011.