[Baseball Rarities]

Steve - They are definitely confusing sets. I have scoured period periodicals for any hints on when they were issued, but have not come up with anything unlike the newspaper accounts that exist for the the PC760 Rose Co. set dating it to August of 1908 and for the PC765 AC Dietsche offering dating it to October of 1907.

It is not surprising that numerous postmarks exist for the both these sets from these exact months. Outside of printed visual evidence, I think that postmarks are a good way to date a set. They at least give you a definitive date as to when the cards were available to the public. Unfortunately, in the case of both the PC796 and PC805 sets, there are not a lot of examples known with postmarks. The earliest postmark that I have in my files for a PC796 Sepia postcard is October 14, 1910 for a PC805 Novelty Cutlery is September 27, 1911.

The images used in the postcards also have clues, such as the Cobb/Wagner image used in the PC796 and PC805 sets. It is from the 1909 World Series, so we know that that specific postcard was not issued until after that date. It is doubtful that any company would have issued the set after the World Series since interest in baseball would have been waning. Instead, it would make more sense that they would wait until the following baseball season to release them - possible waiting until the times of the 1910 World Series and 1911 World Series, which coincide with the earliest postmarks that we currently know of.

There are other images in the sets that picture players with uniforms that seem to be unique to the 1909 season, so again, these cards would have had to have been produced after those dates. I forget which ones they are, but I think that many of the Cubs players are pictured in their 1909 uniforms.

Yes, there are some images in the set that are dated earlier, but, as we know, card manufacturers were always using old photos for their sets. For example, the 1908 Rose Co. postcard of Honus Wagner uses a Horner image taken in 1903.

It is very frustrating that nothing more definitive has come up for the PC796 Anonymous Sepia or the PC805 Novelty Cutlery sets.