Card ID Help?

[Hot Springs Bathers]

Fist of all let me apologize for not having a photo of the card I can't indentify!

Yesterday I was called by a friend to look at a fairly large set of tobacco and caramel cards. A elderly gentleman had brought them to my friend looking for a buyer.

The group was really varied, 7 T-206s including Cobb bat-on and & Cobb bat-off and a Cy Young. There were 26 E91s, a T204 Powell and a E95 Merkle, 105 T218s, 14 E79 boxers and 20 E46 Indians.

The T206s and E79s were in the best condition and the rest all "1s or at best an occasional 2" with the E46 Indians the worst.

My question comes to one baseball card I have never seen before. It was the same size as the T218s, black border framing a black & white actual photo of a player bending over to field a ball. The reverse had four rows in color with suits of playing cards-hearts-diamonds, etc.. The only wording was if a card is lost substitute a joker-at least that is what my hurried notes say.

Any idea what this was? I found no indentification of the player.

The real sad news was that the gentleman told me at first that his selling price was firm at 100K. I did not want to insult him but said I felt that he had about $2,500 in cards which I offered. After a couple of moments of silence he countered with 50K. I said I was afraid this took me out of it but wished him good luck and left him my phone number. I really don't expect to hear from him. Someone has convinced him he has a goldmine.

Any help would be appreciated, my curiosity about the mystery card is getting to me.

[leftygrove10]

Did you try clicking through the scans on the Old Cardboard link above to try to find your mystery card?

[Hot Springs Bathers]

Brad- Thanks but I did do that and never came up with anything. I have a fairly good library of old hobby guides and still nothing. I am attempting to get a photo copy of the card to share with everyone.

[Leon]

Hi Mike
Not sure without seeing it but there were many different generic baseball game cards put out in the early 20th century. They didn't have players names and usually didn't have a team associated with them. As a type collector I have picked some of them up.....A scan of yours or any other info might help. Here are a few examples but none seem to fit your description....

[Hot Springs Bathers]

Leon- Top row middle card! That is it. The card I saw had the player bending at the waist in a fielding position.

As I said before the reverse had a four color presentation with all four trumps of cards listed in rows and the strange statement of what to do if a card was missing.

Call me stupid but I don't think this card would put the lot into the 50K range. The gentleman was not indignant at my offer but I am sure he is convinced that his cards are worth what he has been told in the past.

He did say they belonged to his father who lived in the Providence, RI region. It was obvious from the boxers, indians and the lone E95 that his Dad liked the Philadelphia Caramel product!

Thanks, mystery solved.

[Leon]

Hi Mike
Glad to help. There are only 1-2 header cards in each deck of those Rustlers cards and for a long time, when I started, they were of unknown origin. The header card positively id'd them when I finally found it. Yes, there are a few different poses in each deck too. I would call them a dark blue border but I get sort of tangled up on some color differentiation myself. Glad to be of help. take care