M128 Tri-facta in relation to 1915 W-Unc....

[Leon]

This is something you won't see every day ... hence the thread..

Recently I did a whirlwind trade with a prominent board member for the last of the M128s (Police Gazette) photo-cards I needed to go with the 1915 W-Unc's in my collection. Since only 1 each of these cards is known in the hobby today, I wonder what their relationship is to the M128s? It does seem obvious the M128 pictures were used for these cards. Could these cards have been prototypes for the series? Why are they so scarce today? Regardless of the answers I am very happy to have the final M128 needed added to the collection. The M128 Matty could also be considered his Rookie since it was produced in 1901. All of these M128s and 1915 W-Uncs are the same size respectively but the scans and pictures are all different.

[nolemmings]

Very nice card Leon--the only one known with an all caps font. You may recall that Lew Lipset not only sold a couple dozen of these in 2010 but he also wrote a brief summary about them in Old Cardboard. Seems there are several of the cards that have 2 known examples; if so, these might not be considered prototypes. As you probably know, all of them show images that are attributed to either Police Gazette or Mendelsohn (except maybe Evers and Magee, which I've never seen). I've always wondered if these were Mendelsohn's creation--seems very close in style to m101s from 1916, although I guess he could have taken someone else's idea and run with it.
If his, it's interesting that he opted out of multi-player cards in his subsequent issues.

The dating has always puzzled me on these, and Lew thinks there may have been two sets. Lajoie was not on the A's until 1915 so that pretty much seals it that at least some were issued that year, since his card is captioned with Philadelphia. Still, Lobert had not been with the Reds since 1910 and Stahl had been out of the league since the end of 1913, yet they're included with the Red and Red Sox respectively. Oh well, hopefully we'll learn more about these sooner rather than later.