Pedestrianism
 

Just in case anyone ever wondered about those 19th century cards with the person listed as a "Pedestrian".

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...-than-football

long article and lot's of information and stories of many of the walkers.
Never knew most of it so it was a good read

Thanks for sharing

Great article. Here's my favorite Pedestrian, the only one in the T218 set. He has some other cards, and a couple of modern biographies. This is all 4 of his cards in the T218 family, the upper left is the tough C52. Bottom right is the common variation.

There are books on Weston too. See:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/P/...ZZZ_SX500_.jpg

Another famous pedestrian was Hart, who also played baseball.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Hart_(athlete)

Hart's card from 1880 in an SGC 2, sold for $5,276 in March.

See: https://youtu.be/Z_pql3vdoqI?t=64

Wow that HART pedestrian card is a cool card and never realized they could go for that much

The Hart card has a lot of historical significance, as the Wikipedia article notes.

Also, they are very rare.

PSA has only 1 graded (highest is a PSA 2)
SGC has only 4 graded (highest is an SGC 2)

That Hart is amazing! I did some more research into this subject after posting this link and it's fascinating. I am fan of Hart, but my favorite Pedestrian is Weston as well.

Weston's Between the Acts card is among the rarest of all.

No PSA
Only 2 SGC
(Image from Worthpoint)

Pedestrianism was a huge sport in the 1800s before baseball hit its stride, with competitions in Madison Square Gardens. And Weston was one of its pioneers.

https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.c...pedestrianism/

The peds featured in regular write-ups in The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/1878/09/30/a...cement-of.html

Fascinating. Is this a card? postcard? CDV? What's on the back?

It's a CDV and it has some writing.

Thanks for sharing.

Here is another piece on the pedestrians.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...-pedestrianism

https://img.atlasobscura.com/Y3r35Au...3dlYi5qcGc.jpg

https://img.atlasobscura.com/c1o_NRR...3dlYi5qcGc.jpg

Just listed my T218 of Weston, the grand champion of pedestrianism. Listed in the tobacco (non-T206) forum.

WOW great stuff and in great shape

Fascinating article, Jeremy - thanks for posting.