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Judge Dred (Fred)Something to realize is that the grading companies don't distinguish which year a card is from. They (SGC and PSA) typically put the (accepted) first year of issue (1887) on the flips. You can tell the grading company which year it is from but they only designate 1887 as the year of issue. I'd like to see if someone has a flip that indicates otherwise because I couldn't get either company to place the proper year on the flip (unless it happened to be 1887).
There is a copyright on the cards that may provide a little insight regarding the issue year. There are different styles of cards which also give away the year of issue. There are some cards which are assumed to be from 1890 because the teams indicated for the player could only be from that particular year.
There's other ways to date these things... anyone else want to chime in?