Batting Order/Lineup Cards
 

Hey all,

Thanks for any info in advance. Please let me know if anything I've written here is wrong.

I've recently started a small collection of lineup cards after coming across a couple of vintage cards from the 30's for teams managed by Walter Johnson and Bucky Harris (each signed their last names on the cards.)

I've been trying to learn a little more about these kinds of items and if I understand correctly for each game there were 3 copies: one that the team kept (and possibly hung up in the dugout), one given to the other manager and the last given to the umpire.

For many years (I don't know when it started) these were made using carbon copy.

Assuming this is all accurate:
1) How does one tell whether a line-up card is the top copy or a carbon copy (I've seen some on eBay that looked like they were signed in pen but the seller mentioned that it was a carbon copy and I picked up another lineup card from a 1950's Pacific Coast League game and it occurred to me that I am unsure if it is hand written original or a carbon copy)

2) Does anyone know when they started using the carbon copies?

3) My approach to them in general has been to view the top copy as being autographed, and the carbon copies to be somewhere in between an autograph and a facsimile. Is there an accepted way of viewing these?

Thanks in advance! And if anyone has any of these from teams where the manager was a HOF (or otherwise significant figure in baseball history) I would love to see it, and would love to see about making a deal.

Thanks!

Interesting question. I know nothing about line up cards, and did not even know they hard carbon copies, but assuming the carbon copy was transferred at the time the document was written, I would consider it an ‘autograph”, not a facsimile. The reason for that is because it was the person’s own signature written in their own handwriting. It wasn’t copied at some later date. The person wrote it, in this case using pen, ink, and carbon as the writing instruments. All that being said, I would pay more for the top copy than the carbon copy, and would grade the quality of the signature on the carbon just like any signature.