Posted By:
Hal LewisAlthough Dan McKee will obviously disagree since he owns them...
I don't think the 1894 Alpha Engraving pictures qualify as true "baseball cards" either, since only ONE set was made and they were only produced by the photographer. Again, this is no different than a guy taking polaroids of the players in his studio. NOT cards to me.
Same is true for the 1904 Alleghany game cards. Only ONE set ever produced, so no kid on the streets in 1904 could have EVER collected these. In fact, the only existing set was probably stolen from the U.S. Patent office years later.
HOWEVER ... because BOTH of these sets are so rare and so cool and so well-known ... I would LOVE to own some of these and would buy them in a flash for the right price!
But I would think of them more as RARE baseball ITEMS more than I would think of them as true baseball "TRADING CARDS."