Same problem (and lack of success) here trying to find those earlier threads...
just tried Darren's Google/"search site:www.net54baseball.com" trick and that didn't help either...
Andy, we wouldn't swear they're "period" (nor would we insist they're not). The font on those strips
always made us suspicious about whether they're as old as they seem -- it looks a bit "modern" to us,
but a typography historian could tell us how old that font style actually is.
John, they're not from Milton Bradley's
Game of Base Ball (which really isn't even a "baseball game" at all,
just a "chase" game,
a la Snakes and Ladders, with baseball graphics). BoardGameGeek is a superb resource
in many ways, but as an unvetted wiki, it's fraught with errors (the very first entry on the page you linked,
for example, identifies the
The Champion Game of Base Ball, definitively from 1915, as an "1888" product).
Good point, though, about the front-and-back printing -- a curious element.
Leon, thanks for chiming in -- yeah, we're pretty sure the pic we posted was of the strips you had.
Interesting to note (can't remember if it was mentioned in the earlier discussions) that Chance, Hofman,
Kling, and Tinker, in the red set, have identical bodies, and Baker, Collins, Davis, and Hartzel (in blue)
likewise, with just their faces Photoshopped (or some ancient precursor) swapped onto them.
Ooh, one more edit to add: occurs to us that Andy's player strips might maybe possibly perhaps originate
in some as-yet-unidentified sheet of cut-outs, vaguely similar to McLoughlin Bros' 1894-95
Amusement for
Boys to Cut Out, recently discussed here [
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=21824 ],
first identified after years of mystery here [
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=175103 ],
and covered in some further detail here [
http://baseballgames.dreamhosters.com/BbMcLoughlin.htm ].