OK, I see that there is not much interest in this set but I will discuss what I've learned so far in the off-chance that somebody in the future will be interested. I've looked through all the cards that I could find on the internet and I've determined that there are 25 different backs. Each back has 2 "plays" on it - each one is the result of a single pitch (i.e. ball, strike, double, foul, etc). I assume that the game was played by flipping a card over and using the result to keep score of your ballgame (just like keeping the scorebook for a game today). Since each card is a single pitch, you would need hundreds of cards or have to reshuffle often to finish a 9 inning game. I also assume that this was pretty boring and the game wasn't too popular. I also don't see any evidence (like a bend in the middle of the cards) to suggest that the cards were shuffled very much.
So, how many front/back combos are there? If each card came with each of the possible backs, there would be 625 combos. I doubt that there were that many. So far, the most I have seen is 7 fronts for any one back and 7 backs for any one front. That would make 175 possible combos. I don't really have enough data yet to say that that is the correct number. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the real number is 8. I'll post again later when I have more data.
- Dave
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