[oldjudge]

It's always great to talk about the Old Judge set. You are right that the Old Judge set is really many sets. Some of these are entirely baseball sets, and others are sets where baseball players are joined by boxers, actresses, other athletes, and political figures. The first photographic Goodwin & Co set including baseball players was issued in 1886, not 1887. It is the script series, and it is also made up of boxers. Next came the Short Number set, and then the "0" Number set. If I understand what you are proposing it is to use the "0" numbers as pose numbers. You can do this for the "0" number cards but you have now classified about 550 poses of the more an 2500 poses now known in the set. Also, in the short number set number 102 is a Jim McCormick pose. In the "0" number set number 0102 is a Jim Fogarty pose.
I think if one wanted to treat the Old Judge set like we treat current baseball sets we would subdivide the Old Judge set into the following subclasses:

Script Cards--baseball players and boxers
Short Number set-baseball players, actors and actresses, other athletes, politicians
"0" Number set--baseball players, boxers, other athletes
1888 Fa set
1888 Fb set
1889 set
1890 set
Old Judge cabinets

You can collect the cards like this. However, I collect poses and I want all the poses of a particular player aggregated together. I can use the Cartophilic Society listing to disaggregate the pose listing into year, and/or set, if I chose to. If you get the Cartophilic Listing you can do the same.

Phil--if you are interested in what year a particular player had his first card issued you can also use the Cartophilic Listing or, for HOFers, you can ask me (there aren't that many).