[brianp-beme]

I decided many a moon ago to approach the 1910 and 1911 sets as one unit, trying to get all the different fronts that are seen in the two sets (minus the variations seen in the 1910 150 series, which at the time I was not familiar with).

A little background. If a player was featured in the 1910 Obak set, and then was included in the 1911 with the same team designation, the card fronts from these two sets are exactly identical. For example Agnew of Los Angeles team is seen in the 1910 set, and in 1911 an Agnew of Los Angeles was issued again: the two fronts on these cards are identical. 175 cards were issued in both the 1910 and 1911 sets, and 74 of each set share the same fronts like the example noted above.

In cases where a player featured in 1910 was issued in 1911 with another team designation, the artwork is different on the fronts: for example in 1910 Castleton was pictured with Los Angeles, whereas in 1911 Castleton's team designation is Vernon and thus the artwork is different. There are 22 examples of this between the two sets.

Each year has its own group of cards exhibiting unique artwork. For example the player Briswalter was only issued in 1910 (Los Angeles), while Akin was only issued in the 1911 set (Los Angeles). Thus both 1910 and 1911 each have 79 cards that are unique to their own set.

Long story short, if a collector wants to just collect all the different fronts between these two 175 series sets, the amount of cards they would need to get would be 276 (74 shared designs, 22 1910 cards of players that are shown in 1911 with a different team, as well as those 22 1911 team change versions, and the 79 unique subjects of the 1910 set as well as the 79 unique 1911 subjects).

Let's just say I like to make collecting unnecessarily complicated and challenging. What I decided to collect was the complete 175 card 1911 set (I like the corny player write-ups on the back), and then the 79 unique 1910 subjects as well as the 22 1910 team change players. That way I got the fun of collecting a complete set, as well as all the different and mostly fantastic artwork available between the two sets. One could also decide to collect all the 1910 set and the other 101 unique artwork cards in the 1911 set, or could just do a two set 276 card jumble

Brian