Posted By:
Judge DredRick,
It realy doesn't matter to whom you send the N172 cards, they pretty much all (reputable grading/authenticating companies) do the same thing.
You can do all the research and tell them exactly what it is but they will always label it 1887 N172. I don't understand why they just don't neglect the year and just label it N172 (as PSA does T206 cards). Personally I'd rather the grading services left the year off the label if it isn't an 1887 card because it is difficult to try and explain this to someone that doesn't understand the N172 series.
It would be nice to see the catalog break the issued down into the basic subsets. The one thing about OJs is that there is such a variety of them that it could be difficult to completely break down every aspect (logo, no logo, copyright dates, etc) of them. There are a few seriously hard core collectors out there that have a lot of knowledge of this issue but the information remains rather guarded.
I guess it's easier for the grading services to just put 1887 on the labels because the people that grade the material aren't knowledgeable enough to distinguish the difference between an 1887, 1888, 1889 or 1890 (even if the card has the copyright year on the card). I haven't checked out the population report for U The population report for OJs is vague at best because there are so OJs but I would be willing to bet that they don't really break the players down to different poses. There is a Brit publication that catalogs OJs but these catalog references are rarely used by most people (probably because most people don't have the catalog reference available to them.
I am by no means an expert on OJs. I like the issue, it's one of my favorites but I've got a lot to learn about the cards, yet.