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Old 09-09-2006, 07:28 PM
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Default I realize that our opinions may differ regarding what constitutes a baseball card

Posted By: Gilbert Maines

And I hope to not cover old ground in this thread, however, I recently came across a noteworthy card in Leon's collection which I did not realize existed. It is an uncataloged 19th Century gold bordered card displaying a baseball game in progress, entitled Grand Prix de l'exposition universelle de Paris 1878. Now my French is a little rusty, but I don't think that they are showing a game played in this country.

And here is where my quandry lies. In a effort to identify cards worthy of including in a cataloging effort, each choice can not effectively be discussed at length. So the individual conducting the tabulating effort makes many decisions on the run. Occasionally (now) I come across a card of particular artistic merit, which I normally would dismiss as not representative of the American pastime.

But the extenuating circumstance is that who is anyone to exclude any card from being recognized as a collectible? Particularly one which a reasonable person may seek to acquire upon identifying its existence.

So my question is would you include this card if you were in an initial decision making capacity regarding what cards should be included in a ACC update? (card posted in Leon's personal collection)

Edited to add:

It is really way worse than that. You see, just before encountering this card, I came across another attractive card depicting an unidentified female pitcher. In general, I feel that unidentified ballplayers are an unacceptable grade below identified ballplayers who are generically represented (I wonder why I feel one to be better than the other). In any case, I dismissed the female card as not collectible because the player is not identified, yet the French card does not identify the players.

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