My #5 type collection has a few 19th century cards and these appear to be the oldest. From what I know, these lady baseball players date to the late 1880s, when Allen & Ginter employed a significant number of women as cigarette rollers. Other sets exist showing cigarette rollers and bicycle riders, many using the same studio models.
A&G used these images, in part, as a competitive PR campaign to influence public opinion _against_ mechanization of cigarette production. Duke & Sons tobacco quietly used high-efficiency machines to out-produce competitors like A&G and overtook them by the 1890s.
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Number5TypeCollection.com, blogging the vintage century one card set at a time.
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