Quote:
Originally Posted by Mungo Hungo
To me, this is kind of an "emperor has no clothes comment" -- you're clearly right, but so many people turn somersaults to avoid that conclusion.
I'm not one of the people who claim that Exhibits are not cards. They're literally made of cardboard and they picture baseball players in uniforms. But I also think that there's a very good reason for many people to discount them, at least the "1939-46 set" and the "1947-66 set."
To my mind, one of the main components of most baseball cards is their temporal feature--that is, they're intended to memorialize a player at a certain time, and are intended to be released only over a short period, usually no more than a year, but occasionally over a period of 2-to-3 years. The early Exhibits fit that description, but the "1939-46" and "1947-66" cards certainly do not.
From a Pre-War Cards article:
"[W]hile many collectors assume all of the Exhibits with salutations ceased in 1946, that isn’t really true. Some of the Salutations Exhibits were printed into the 1950s and even 1960s."
From a Sports Collectors Daily article on the 1947-66 cards:
"Many cards were redistributed year after year with new players added over the years. Some players that remained on the same teams had many cards printed while others that changed teams may have fewer ones."
In short, the 1939-66 Exhibits (aside from a couple of separate sets that are not often discussed) were, from my reading of things, reprinted at will for a couple of decades. In this, they're similar to team-issued photocards and postcards issued by Rowe, Elder, McCarthy and others. Again, that doesn't mean that the Exhibits aren't cards. But a card that can be reprinted year after year is very different in my book than one that is issued for a year (or maybe even two or three) and never again.
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There's a lot more nuance to it than that. The company revised its baseball runs nearly every season from 1921-66 (ish). Some cards were repeated. Some were not. As far as I can tell, the cards of a player basically ended whenever the player's career ended, and some guys had new designs from time to time. That's what makes it fun. We can say for sure that certain years had certain cards based on checklist cards that were created. I don't recall if I posted these before but here you go:
1950 set checklist:
1951 set checklist:
Some guys, like Paige, appear to have been one-year issues. The "An Exhibit Card" at the bottom was exclusive to new designs in 1949 and Paige is not on the 1950 or 1951 checklists.