Help with 1903 SL NYAL team composite

[bigfanNY]

I have to disagree with your theory that both W601's originated in a 1904 portfolio. First off my copy doesn't have the holes on the left border for the string. It seems more likely that early copies sold as singles had the Adkins and later copies. Like the OP's copy with the 3 holes on the left border came from a portfolio.

[bigfanNY]

This is the 1906 NYAL print. Issued I believe in the 1907 Portfolio.
I have discussed variations in printing with SB1 in the past. Dark ink vs light red tint brown tint. But given the overall scarcity of W601's I am not sure much in the way of variations has ever been cataloged. But The Adkins we are discussing is the first player variation I have seen.

[Baseball Rarities]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

I have to disagree with your theory that both W601's originated in a 1904 portfolio. First off my copy doesn't have the holes on the left border for the string.

I think that you are right. I assumed that they both had the holes on the on their left hand borders. Examples with full borders and no holes were surely issued as individual premiums by The Sporting Life and were not a part of their bound portfolios.

I need to look in my files and see if I have images of the ads in The Sporting Life to see when the individual premiums were offered for sale compared to the complete portfolios. I am not sure which ones came first.

[Baseball Rarities]

Here is an ad from page 10 of the March 17, 1906 issue of The Sporting Life which is offering individual composites featuring teams from 1902 to 1905. They were 6 cents each or 50 cents for a dozen.

These are the individual premiums without holes that Jonathan referred to above.

The listed teams match up perfectly with the complete bound portfolios that were offered on a yearly basis.

These premiums with three holes on their left borders come from these bound portfolios.