Proposed Old Judge Reorganization

[oldjudge]

No need to ignore anything--just consider each series as a separate entity.

[cyseymour]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

No need to ignore anything--just consider each series as a separate entity.

That would certainly be possible for those who wish to collect the pugilist/non-sports cards as well as the baseball. For those who wish to collect solely the baseball cards, it would be a way of condensing the two series into one 1887 OJ set.

[jcmtiger]

Seymore I was confused about Old Judge cards. Mainly about the Detroit Players. After many emails with Joe G. he set me free, he has the knowledge to help. Helped me with the 1887 Detroit players, the Fa, FB Detroit players and the international players.

email joe g he can help

Joe

[cyseymour]

Joe,

Any insight into why 1887 was divided into the Short Number set and the Zero set?

Also, do you think that, seeing that "n172" is only supposed to encompass baseball, 1887 OJ's could be broken into a baseball set since there are 575 baseball poses (excluding Willie Hahm) and the Zero set goes to 575? I am detecting some symmetry there...

Thanks

[Joe_G.]

Originally Posted by cyseymour

Joe,

Any insight into why 1887 was divided into the Short Number set and the Zero set?

Also, do you think that, seeing that "n172" is only supposed to encompass baseball, 1887 OJ's could be broken into a baseball set since there are 575 baseball poses (excluding Willie Hahm) and the Zero set goes to 575? I am detecting some symmetry there...

Thanks

Not entirely sure I understand your question or if my answer provides anything Jay hasn't already shared. At any rate, there are 32 different short numbered baseball poses w/ McCormick enjoying some re-issued poses with team update (Pittsburgh). The zero numbered baseball subjects start at "032" which I believe to be purely coincidental w.r.t. there being 32 different short number baseball poses. The zero numbered cards have many missing numbers between "032" and "0575", most of them being in the Brooklyn grouping (highest numbers).

I believe Goodwin & Co. did a fine job assigning numbers in 1887 but by the time 1888 rolled around, the scope of the set more than doubled with full coverage of all NL, AA, and WA teams. There was a lot of player movement and the cards design was somewhat simplified. No more careful placement of the "Old Judge Cigarettes" banner in the photo area, no more number.

Going back to the 1886/1887 issue, I do believe there was overlap amongst the script, short number, and "0" numbered cards. Some of the surviving uncut sheets suggest this. Some script cards are more common than others. For example, the poses that can be found in both Ay and Ax formats are typically a bit more common with what I suspect was an early (Ay) and a later (Ax) production date. All of the Spotted Ties are of the Ay (early) format while others such as the script cards of Roger Connor can be found with both and show up more frequently than any of the Spotted Ties.

A careful read of the Old Judge book should make good sense of all this and more.

[Joe_G.]

Originally Posted by cyseymour

Joe,

Any insight into why 1887 was divided into the Short Number set and the Zero set?

Also, do you think that, seeing that "n172" is only supposed to encompass baseball, 1887 OJ's could be broken into a baseball set since there are 575 baseball poses (excluding Willie Hahm) and the Zero set goes to 575? I am detecting some symmetry there...

Thanks

My response above may have been the result of me over-thinking your question.

If your question is simply why are there different sets from late 1886 & 1887 then the answer is a bit different. It is clear from the player and team combinations found within the 1886-1887 issues that the script cards (Ay examples in particular) pre-date the numbered cards and that the short numbered pre-date the "0" numbered. It is possible that the Baseball card issue was re-scoped several times over late 1886-1887. As more baseball negatives arrived from various studios such as Gray Studio, the card maker/producer had decisions to make. For example, how would the cards be organized and mass produced? It is possible, perhaps likely, that the studio(s) responsible for making the cards for Goodwin and Co. changed during 1887. It may have taken multiple studios to meet the demand for the baseball card inserts. All of these scenarios could help explain the many differences during late 1886-1887. Not only the script vs short number vs "0" number, but Type A vs Type B "0" number, Brooklyn minis and the many other variations (Ay & Ax script cards, missing numbers on cards that should have them, cards with and without copyrights, etc.). In the absence of proof, we can only speculate why the separate issues and the many variations.

[cyseymour]

Joe, thank you very much for your extensive and interesting answers. I'll need to go back and study the book to better understand all the details of the printing, but from a collector's perspective, on a purely practical level - do you like the idea of dividing OJ's into 1887, 88 and 89 (86 and maybe 90, even), for the sake of set registry's, pop reports, things like that?

Point being that while the differences in the subsets is all very interesting, the set could still largely be broken into 1887, 1888, and 1889 cards comprising of three different sets, and that for the 1887's, it would be fairly easy to track them by the number that actually appears on the card, even if you were combining the Zero and Short series print runs into a larger 1887 baseball set.

Thanks

[Joe_G.]

Personally, I would support breaking the set into the following:

N172-1 = 1886-1887 Script
N172-2 = 1887 Short Number
N172-3A & 3B = 1887 "0" Number (A & B referring to the type)
N172-4 = 1888 Fa
N172-5 = 1888 Fb
N172-6 = 1889
N172-7 = 1890

In each case, I would order the cards in alphabetical order. I do collect the 28 sequential "0" numbers from 0481 to 0508 as these represent the Detroit Wolverines. One might expect me to like the idea of ordering them as Goodwin did; but not the case. I would like to see the cards in alphabetical order for consistency.

So my beloved NL Detroit Wolverines would all fall under N172-3A and N172-5 (with a small number of re-issues showing up as N172-4)

An alternate naming convention could be as follows (non-conventional naming, but easier for those of us who have studied the set for many years):

N172 Script
N172 Short Number
N172 "0" Number
N172 Fa
N172 Fb
N172 Fc
N172 Fc NL/PL

I'm also OK leaving it as just N172