[nolemmings]

Thanks Leon.
I dabble in researching these from time to time, although they are probably among the least popular cards out there for a few obvious reasons.

There are various small distinctions in many of the labels that help pinpoint the year these were issued, but the differences can be subtle and the degree of proof sometimes wobbly. Every once in awhile a large group of one team or more will help establish a specific year of issue– the 1927 Yankees for example– then you can look closely at the typeset on the labels and compare with others to include or exclude them as coming from the same year.

It would be neat if someone could take one of these that has multiple labels and remove the top ones so that we can at least deduce that what lies below was earlier in time. Here is my favorite, which is about as generic as they come:


What is interesting is that this is from the initial 1921 set, where the info was printed right onto the player’s base. This one is of a lefty pitcher, of which there are two in every single team set. The problem is that the 1921 Yankees had only one southpaw–Harry Harper, who was part of the set- which left the other lefty pose without a name to fill. It is unlikely that this ever occurred again for any team in the entire ten-year run of these die-cuts. So there he is, an anonymous player. As the years went by the boards were changed to no longer list info but just numbers on the base and only labels were supplied, which left the owner to decide who went with each pose. Therefore this is likely the only instance where you have an anonymous player identified with no name in the entire decade-long life of the game (although obviously someone could ‘fix” that after 1921 by slapping some player’s label over it).