[Cozumeleno]

I've heard the nickname argument before but never personally bought into it. The reason is because you don't see that on his other cards. He's almost always referred to as Irv/Irving or simply Young. I don't know that he has a single other card where he's called Cy.

I've scoured through old newspapers for this, too. You sometimes saw a reference to the nickname but usually in conjunction with his real name to avoid confusion (i.e. Irving Cy Young or Young Cy Young). I don't know that he was blatantly called Cy Young much (if at all). My general belief is that it was simply an error. They either used the wrong picture or had the wrong name. I've always had a problem with believing that the card was simply listing his nickname because you don't see that on his other issues (i.e. T206, Fan Craze, E98, etc. His E98 card, curiously, has quotation marks around the 'Cy', kind of treating it like a nickname. But I think that was probably done because the pictures used the same ones as E97 and it was a way to recognize that it wasn't THE Cy Young.

One issue with the dating theory that actually ties into this is that, if the cards were printed after December 1908 and intended to feature Irv, he had long since left Boston since he went to Pittsburgh in the middle of that season. Cy Young, meanwhile, pitched with Boston for all of 1908. If your dating theory is correct, I have an even stronger belief that the card was supposed to feature Cy since Irv had left Boston midway through the season.

In short, I think we have a long way to go to solving this, haha!