1920s w-unc baseball/boxers..really neat group

[Leon]

Had I not had an example already I would have been all over this group.....something you don't see every day and went for a fairly healthy price...Congrats to the winner.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/EARLY-1900-B...-/120840607094



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[asphaltman]

Interesting, never noticed it. What does your example look like? Assuming blank backed and no advertiser's name anywhere.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by asphaltman

Interesting, never noticed it. What does your example look like? Assuming blank backed and no advertiser's name anywhere.

Yeap, blank backed and no advertising..

[glchen]

I got creamed when trying to bid for this. As Leon said, it's 1920s W-UNC or as Frank says c1925 Universal Toy.

Can anyone identify the players on the top row? The first two are Ruth and Meusel. How about the rest? (Unfortunately, the ebay listing did not have larger scans.)

[Exhibitman]

What's there appears to be 2 cuts from exhibit 4 on 1 baseball cards, 3 Tom Mix strip cards or 3 cuts from 4 on 1 exhibits with Mix, the BB cards, and 10 of the boxing cards from the issue.

Very rare stuff. I've been tracking this issue for years. BB players Ruth and Meusel are in the lot; there's also a McGraw:



Can't tell if the red BB card in the top is JMack or not--looks like it could be.

I don't know who else is in the issue on the BB side besides those three and Tris Speaker. The Ebay group added a couple of new names to the boxing checklist for the issue, which now stands at 13 cards: Benny Leonard, Young Bob Fitzsimmons.

I assume there's a full deck of playing cards plus some jokers, so there should be a lot more to discover. It would be most interesting to see if the players are on the same card value each time [i.e., is Ruth always an Ace]. I've handled multiple specimens of a few of the boxers and they seem to be consistent with player-card value allocation.

It may be that the other subjects aren't sports. There are some entertainment cards that are intriguingly similar, though slightly different in the typesetting:



Oh, BTW, I won it.

[dstudeba]

Good work on the win, I thought of you immediately when I saw Leon's post!

[Northviewcats]

Nice pick up. I sniped it at about half the hammer price. Blew me away.

Joe

[edhans]

Nice pick-up Adam. I thought about dropping you a line to see if you wanted to go partners in it. Glad you got it.

Ed

[Exhibitman]

I finally sat down and created a matrix/checklist incorporating all of the cards I know of from the three subjects [baseball, boxing, entertainment] into a deck of cards. The results were very interesting. The baseball, boxing and entertainment cards fit together perfectly. I have evidence of the existence of 13 boxers, 4 ballplayers and 10 entertainers and not one overlapping card. Here is the matrix:



I was initially hesitant in putting the entertainers with the athletes because the boxers had an extra line of writing but after seeing how the the cards mesh, I am no longer concerned. In my mind the seamless fit of the various subjects I can confirm is very strong proof that this issue was a mixed subjects issue that will eventually be found to comprise a full deck of cards. I have scans of every card on the matrix, BTW, so I am certain that all of them exist.