1896 Litho help needed

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Posted By: Rob M (ramram)

Anyone familiar with the litho shown below? It was produced in 1896 by Forbes Lith. Co. Boston & NY for Schipper and Block "The Biggest, Best and Busiest Store, Peoria, Ill." and is titled "The National Game of Baseball". It apparently is designed to be a 3-D cutout but is it a game or just for display? Seems like I have seen another very similar produced about the same time but for another company. I'm probably going to stick it on ebay or send to an auction but I don't know quite how to describe what it is. Any help would be appreciated!

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Posted By: leon

If I am not mistaking ( and I might be on this one ) there were some Forbes, Victorian looking, trading cards of about 1878-1881, and they had some baseball-kind of theme. .....might be the same company.....too bad these players aren't named, it would be worth more than it is....I would just describe it as best you can with big clear scans.... good luck...also I would be interested in the size of it...It's a great looking litho.....regards

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Posted By: Rob M (ramram)

Thanks Leon. Seems like I've heard the Forbes Litho company name somewhere also?? The size is about 10" x 17".

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Posted By: Hankron

Forbes was a printer (lithographer), and produced a wide variety of printed products, baseball and non-baseball. Above is an example of the 1878 Forbes Co. baseball trade card, ususual as it does not have the typical goofy caption printed across the top.

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Posted By: Hankron

To answer your initial question, you have, quite simply, an '1896 Baseball Table Game.' It was designed to be cut up, bent, folded and played by kids. It's a toy for kids.

Back in 1896, these sorts of paper/thin cardboard cutouts, punch-outs, scraps, paper fold-outs and such were extremely popular with little boys and girls. The 'baseball scrapps' punchout busts that are well known to baseball collectors is merely one example of this phenomenom.

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Posted By: Hankron

I wish to point out that the scraps and similar little die-cuts that one will find (usually pasted into scrapbooks), were rarely issues singly, like trading cards. Usually, a little boy or girl would buy them from the toy store as pages, each page containing a variety of die-cuts and scraps. In the ealier days, the boy or girl would have to cut out by hand the little figures. By 1896, they were typically designed so that they could be punched out (press your thumb on the scrap and pop it out).

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Posted By: Rob M

Thanks.

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Posted By: Hankron

For sake of posterity and for service of those who think those brown stains on back are tobacco--, the 1888 Baseball 'Scrapps' were not issued as independant singles, and not sold in candy or tobacco boxes. Each Baseball Scrapp would have been part of a sheet containing a variety of different little die-cuts, and the Scrapp would have been punched out from this sheet. They were specfically designed to be punched and glued into a little boy's or girl's scrapbook. This explains why almost all 1888 Baseball Scraps originate from a scrapbook and more often than not have the remnants of brown wood glue (sometimes mistaken for tobacco stains) on back.