Earliest Baseball card set

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Posted By: barrysloate

Corey's last point touched on something that I would like to elaborate on, and I believe he and I are on the same page with this one. In short, I think we could make the argument that Peck & Snyders are baseball cards, and CdV's are not.

There is no question that the photographic Peck & Snyder cards were a point of purchase item at the famous sporting goods store. My understanding is you could walk in and either purchase one of the cards, or if you were a good customer making a large order you could get one or more for free. So even though they were only distributed in lower Manhattan, the general public certainly had access to them.

I do not believe the same could be said for CdV's. How would a baseball fan even be able to acquire a CdV of his favorite player or team? I don't believe he could, unless he had direct access to the photography studio, or knew somebody on the team. It is rather likely that only team members and officials were given CdV's of the players, thus they would not qualify as baseball cards.

There is one exception, as there are a number of 1869 Cincinnati Reds CdV's known with period advertising on the reverse. One I recall advertised Henry Chadwick's book The Game of Baseball, and I believe there is a second. Any CdV with product advertising on the reverse was surely distributed to the public. Those six Haymaker CdV's, which have actually been dated 1866, would not in my opinion qualify as baseball cards in the strictest sense since they likely had very limited and private distribution. However, some would argue they are baseball cards and certainly they would have a valid point.