Posted By:
Frank Wakefieldnot at all, Scott.
But these cards can't be separated into 4 piles of 30 cards each, with the cards of any one pile of equal difficulty.
Mr. Lipset ranked the tougher E90-1s into 4 groups, Extremely Rare, Rare, Very Difficult, and Difficult. He had Wagner throwing in the VD group, and you guys have convinced me to move him up to the R group. But I still don't think he is as tough as Mitchell, Graham, or Sweeney with Boston.
Much of Mr. Lipset's work is compounded onto the fine work of Richard Egan. Mr. Egan shows there to be 119 cards in the set at one place, and 118 another place in his Handbook. Wagner throwing is in the 119 listing, I'm not sure which card was added to get to 120, it might have been Clarke, Pittsburgh. In my 1960 edition of Mr. Burdick's American Card Catalog, he shows 111 subjects seen. The first edition of Egan's Handbook was 1969.
Those rascals, why'd they put 100 subjects on the back? I think there are 104 different players depicted. Some players have more than one card, getting us to 120 different. I wonder who the last 4 were? Seems to me if we took out Mitchell, Graham, Walsh and McLean (about the 4 most difficult single card ballplayers in there), then we're at that 100 subject total. Probably a worthless thought, not intended as 'water' on the fire, Scott. But rather as a small spark to the synapses.