Posted By:
Butch & Co.The article on the HOF site is accurate. Barry's confusion was understandable -- there are at least eight different 19th-century tabletop baseball games that include "parlor" in their title (and about a dozen more made between 1900 and the early 1920s).
Mark's 1869 game on exhibit at the Hall (the exhibition is a doozy) is The New Parlor Game - Base Ball., the oldest baseball game known to still exist. There are at least three in private collections.
The 1866 article about the Sebring game in Leslie's followed by several weeks an earlier article on the game in Wilkes' Spirit of the Times. The Sebring game was patented in 1868; an even earlier patent for a similar tabletop baseball game was granted to Buckley in 1867. No sample of either of those two earliest games is known to still exist (there's some doubt as to whether, in fact, either ever went into production) -- but those are the twin "holy grails" of baseball game collecting. Should an example of either ever be found, its price would surely be a record-breaker for baseball games at auction.
Baseball Games
http://members.aol.com/Butch7999/Baseball.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baseballgames/