Oldest commercially produced baseball card?

[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

What is the oldest commercially produced baseball card? I am looking for something more than a local cabinet. I am sure that this topic is debated so I welcome all opinions.

[Leon]

There are other cards produced earlier but you will quickly get into semantics. This one had all paid players though I know there is debate every which way, on what a first card is. This is usually considered one of them, though there is a type of this one that might be months? earlier with a different address, though I am not sure that is definitive or not.

[barrysloate]

The Peck & Snyders can certainly be considered the first baseball cards, but we are not certain how they were distributed. We know they were available at their stores on Ann Street and Nassau Street in NYC, but may not have been found anywhere else. They very well may have been unknown to baseball fans living outside the city.

The first baseball cards with more of a national distribution would have been the Old Judges, which first appeared in 1886.

[drcy]

Peck & Snyder team CDVs were also available via mail order I believe through their catalog.

There are always unanswered questions and debatable details, but I'd pick the Peck & Snyders. There are earlier cards, but there are questions about them, whether game passes count or whether it's a cricket or baseball image. Some people say trade cards don't count as baseball cards-- however, kids collected trade cards back then. Kid's scrapbooks are filled with trade cards, along with scraps, die cuts and trading cards.

No can know for sure and people have different definitions, but Peck & Snyders are a good pick.

I don't think national distribution is a definer. Regional baseball cards are still baseball cards. Though Old Judges were clearly distributed to the general public + have product advertising on them.

It's notable that commercially sold and collected CDVs of celebrities (politicians, generals, actors, writers, inventors) were made during the Civil War. Someday a baseball version may be discovered. There is a civil war era Mathew Brady CDV of Sam ad Harry Wright, but it's debated if it counts as a baseball or cricket image. Sam was a cricketer and his son Harry played both.

There are early baseball CDVs, but we don't know how they were distributed. They could have been sold to the general public, but we don't know. I'm not one for taking leaps of faith.

Lastly, there are Civil War and earlier stereoview cards showing baseball games and they were commercially sold to the public. Though some won't consider these baseball cards. Even I would consider them something else.

Early baseball cards can be called baseball card theory.

Also realize that terms like baseball card, rookie card and pre-rookie card are later coined and defined terms that we apply retroactively. There's nothing organic and eternal about the term rookie card. The hobby made it up in modern times then applied it backwards.

[benjulmag]

If one takes the position that P&S would distribute ice skate verso cards at the time of the year when customers would be looking to purchase winter equipment, I've never understood why the Red Stocking ice skate verso would predate the baseball verso. The Red Stockings achieved national prominence as the 1869 season progressed. So unless the first P&S Red Stockings card appeared at the end of the 1869 season (when an ice skate ad might make sense), why would that be the first issuance of the card? Because of the Ann Street address? Do we know for certain that P&S didn't operate two stores simultaneously for a while? Unless we know for certain they did not, it seems logical that the black baseball verso was the first printing, appearing during the 1869 season, the ice skate verso the second, appearing winter 1869-70, and the red verso the third, appearing during the 1870 season when P&S introduced colored inks. Other than speculation, are there any facts that conclusively establish the ice skate verso as the first printing?

[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

So we are looking at late 1860s to early 1870s for the first cards?

[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

I am really glad that I asked this question. Lots of great info.


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[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

Jay - How does the address serve as a reference to the age?

[Exhibitman]

I think they moved, Alex. A new address would give you an "issued no earlier than" data point--they would not know the new address before they had it, so a card with the new address had to have been made after the move.

This is a great topic that is always going to be subject to debate based on definitions and parameters. I personally treat any card made for a commercial purpose, either to promote a product/service or for sale itself, as a 'card'. That would exclude all privately-produced photos and postcards because they weren't commercial products. Doesn't mean they aren't desirable, just outside the realm of what we are discussing. I'd not necessarily treat the ticket/CDVs as cards simply because their primary purpose appears to be to serve as tickets for a game. The Peck and Snyder team cards are definitely 'cards' to me--meant to promote a business and given to the public.

Copyright dating can be tricky. The copyright date itself is only going to tell you when the image was created--the date the guy sat for the picture. The item itself could be a later creation. However the style of copyright statement used can help pin down an issue date range. For example, in 1870 Congress radically changed the manner in which copyrights were registered, from a district court-based registry to a central registry in DC. To give an example, the card show below was a commercially produced CDV that a photographer in NYC used to sell to the public from his gallery as part of a series of pictures of famous people. The copyright notice is the pre-1870 style. The image dates to 1862. The card could have been made any time from 1862 onward but very likely was made pre-1870 based on the copyright notice used [and in this case based on the location of the gallery as shown on the card back; the photographer later had multiple locations as shown on the card mounts for later printings].

[oldjudge]

Alex--if you read the thread from the beginning you will have your answer, and then some. I would not suggest this if I didn't think this was a particularly interesting thread.

[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Alex--if you read the thread from the beginning you will have your answer, and then some. I would not suggest this if I didn't think this was a particularly interesting thread.

I will give it a reread. A lot of information has been posted in response to my original question.

[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

Having reread the thread the dates make total sense. I think this discussion is a very interesting one but one that we will never really have an answer too.