Old Judge/PSA question

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Posted By: Rick McQuillan

Hi, I recently became interested in Old Judge cards. I bought a few and sent them to PSA for grading/authentication. Before I sent them to PSA I spent some time with Lew Lipsett's Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards, which helped me to identify the cards. I sent them to PSA as:

1887 0 numbered series Geiss
1888 Type 2 Getzein
1888 Type 2 Fagan
1889 Type 3 Murphy

When the cards were returned in the slabs, they were all labeled as 1887 N172 Old Judge.

Does anyone know why PSA doesn't differentiate between the various years that OJ's were produced? If I send in a 1952 Topps card it is labeled as 1952, not 1950. How do GAI and SCG handle the OJ's.

I have the same question about the 2005 Standard Catalog. Why are all of the OJ's lumped together rather than separated by types and years?

When I look at the PSA population report (which is listed alphabetically by first name, which is strange), it makes me wonder how much experience PSA has with the OJ's. Many names only show 1 or 2 being graded. The Bill Fagan card that I submitted appears to be the only Fagan graded by PSA.

I am a novice when it comes to OJ's, but I would imagine that some of you are experts. Any info will be appreciated.

Keep up the great work on the board. It makes for some interesting reading.


Thank you!

Rick

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Posted By: Judge Dred

Rick,

It realy doesn't matter to whom you send the N172 cards, they pretty much all (reputable grading/authenticating companies) do the same thing.

You can do all the research and tell them exactly what it is but they will always label it 1887 N172. I don't understand why they just don't neglect the year and just label it N172 (as PSA does T206 cards). Personally I'd rather the grading services left the year off the label if it isn't an 1887 card because it is difficult to try and explain this to someone that doesn't understand the N172 series.

It would be nice to see the catalog break the issued down into the basic subsets. The one thing about OJs is that there is such a variety of them that it could be difficult to completely break down every aspect (logo, no logo, copyright dates, etc) of them. There are a few seriously hard core collectors out there that have a lot of knowledge of this issue but the information remains rather guarded.

I guess it's easier for the grading services to just put 1887 on the labels because the people that grade the material aren't knowledgeable enough to distinguish the difference between an 1887, 1888, 1889 or 1890 (even if the card has the copyright year on the card). I haven't checked out the population report for U The population report for OJs is vague at best because there are so OJs but I would be willing to bet that they don't really break the players down to different poses. There is a Brit publication that catalogs OJs but these catalog references are rarely used by most people (probably because most people don't have the catalog reference available to them.

I am by no means an expert on OJs. I like the issue, it's one of my favorites but I've got a lot to learn about the cards, yet.

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Rick--You raise a very good question. Old Judge were issued over several years and it is easy to tell the years apart. The Goodwin advertising, as beautifully pointed out in Lew Lipset's book, is the key. The copyright date on the photo is not what to look at--it tells when the photo was acquired by Goodwin & Co, not when the card was issued. Why does PSA not differentiate amongst years of issue--ignorance is probably the best answer.

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Posted By: Joe_G.

I'll just add that the grading companies do make a modest attempt at keeping registries of the cards they grade. These registries can be searched in several different ways including by year. Because N172 Old Judges began in 1887 and no checklist to date lists them by individual years (1887, 1888, 1889, & 1890), the grading companies likely decided to simplify it to a single year designation of 1887. Increasing this to cover the four year run "1887-90 N172" would be an improvement but still misleading as the card submitted in each case can be narrowed down to the exact year it was produced.

The most accurate approach would be as you suggest with the exact year. This would however likely result in a couple issues including more mislabeled cards and can you imagine the Rookie card collectors now feeling more compeled to find a "first year" issue as opposed to a single copy from within the 4 year run. Maybe that is just what Hal and a few others need, a new reason to seek out some new material

Regards,
Joe Gonsowski

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Joe--That's an excellent point. An Old Judge Anson is not his rookie, an 1888 Anson is. This is like saying that a Topps card is Aaron's rookie, not the 1954 Topps. Similar statements can be made for many of the other HOFers in the Old Judge set. Also, at least one HOFer's first card was a minor league card (Hamilton-KC) while his 1890 card was his first major league card (Hamilton-Philadelphia) and therefore his rookie.