A Fantasy Poll for Old Judge Collectors

[Joe_G.]

Assume card condition is constant across all options/cards with strong photos and no major flaws front or back.

Option Details (read the fine print before voting):

Anson in Uniform - Anson is not a difficult card if you settle for his portrait in street clothes however his portrait in uniform is another story with only 3 copies known in private collections. Anson in uniform is considered by some the 19th century T206 Honus Wagner. So rare, it seems as though a collecting career can come and go without seeing one offered publicly, the 19th century Holy Grail.

3 California League Cards + Irwin with Wilkes-Barre – To obtain a single example of a California League card is beyond the means of most collectors, advanced or not, with many of the cards being unique. This option allows you to choose your favorite player/pose from each team (Oakland, Sacramento, & San Francisco) plus add the most difficult team card to your collection with John Irwin, player/manager of the Wilkes-Barre Coal Barons. This should be an attractive option for those interested in the California League (or Pacific Coast baseball history) as well as advanced team collectors.

495 Card Partial Player Set – 495 of 521 possible players, missing the 19 California League players (no Veach California League or with St Paul) and seven others (no Flynn, Gibson, Hahm, Cusick, Warner, Davin, or Doran). Despite this, there are some extremely tough cookies including Anderson, Boyd and many others. The collection would include a complete run of all 27 HOFers. By any measure, this would be a true world-class collection including cards that haven’t been offered in years.

Super Sized HOFers – Here is an option dedicated to the HOF and large format junkies. This option sends 23 different HOF Old Judge cabinets your way together with your favorite large Gypsy Queen HOFer (either Connor, Ewing, Keefe, Kelly, or Ward). The Old Judge cabinets fall four short of the 27 HOFers found in the Old Judge set. The four missing players would be Griffith since he hasn’t yet been catalogued in cabinet form and three others, Beckley, McPhee, and Galvin, who are only known in museum collections. Cabinet rarities such as Delahanty, Rusie, and many others would highlight this option. As an added bonus, multiple examples of colored mounts (brown & black) and advertising (Dogs Head) would be present. You can even specify King Kelly in his “Street Clothes” portrait if you desire.

Depending on who is buying and selling, the values could be similar.

[jcmtiger]

Tough decision Joe G, but I voted for the Cabinets.

Joe M

[rhettyeakley]

Voted for the Anson ( I guess I'm the only one that went that way thus far!), I may have voted for the large accumulation but with the book you guys made firmly in hand I know it wouldn't be enough and I'd have to go all Jay Miller on all you all and try and get all the poses/team var's!
-Rhett

[E93]

I guess I am the second to vote for Anson in uniform. It was a very tough decision, but as Joe mentioned, it is very possible that an Anson in uniform will not be publicly offered in the next 20 years. The N173 HOFs will, at least most of them.
JimB

P.S. Great poll idea!

[GoldenAge50s]

I chose the quantity & the fact that all HOFers are present. Having the CA Lg cards of guys I never heard of just wouldn't mean much to me.

[barrysloate]

I went with the Anson also, but there are no bad choices. You can take the three you want and leave me with the worst one.

[kkkkandp]

Joe:

I went for the California League and Wilkes-Barre option since I already have the makings of an OJ team-example subset.

If you would have thrown in a Players' League team set choice as well, I would have been more torn.

Kevin

[aaroncc]

I voted for the Anson in uniform.