Very nice card Leon--the only one known with an all caps font. You may recall that Lew Lipset not only sold a couple dozen of these in 2010 but he also wrote a brief summary about them in Old Cardboard. Seems there are several of the cards that have 2 known examples; if so, these might not be considered prototypes. As you probably know, all of them show images that are attributed to either Police Gazette or Mendelsohn (except maybe Evers and Magee, which I've never seen). I've always wondered if these were Mendelsohn's creation--seems very close in style to m101s from 1916, although I guess he could have taken someone else's idea and run with it.
If his, it's interesting that he opted out of multi-player cards in his subsequent issues.
The dating has always puzzled me on these, and Lew thinks there may have been two sets. Lajoie was not on the A's until 1915 so that pretty much seals it that at least some were issued that year, since his card is captioned with Philadelphia. Still, Lobert had not been with the Reds since 1910 and Stahl had been out of the league since the end of 1913, yet they're included with the Red and Red Sox respectively. Oh well, hopefully we'll learn more about these sooner rather than later.
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If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other. - Ulysses S. Grant, military commander, 18th US President.
Last edited by nolemmings; 03-29-2014 at 03:50 PM.
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