[Baseball Rarities]

Fair warning - this is extremely boring stuff, so unless you really have interest in the PC796 Sepia and PC805 Novelty Cutlery sets, then you should just scroll on.

First of all, I do not mean any of this to be personal. I have no ulterior motives for misrepresenting the date of issue of these postcards. I have done some research on these and other sets that I have collected over the years (W600s, PC760 Rose Company postcards, etc.) and am just sharing what I have found.

I will try and be as straight forward as possible with the history of the dating for these two sets and where I think the confusion began.

First of all, is there any reason to think that they PC796 Sepia set and PC805 Novelty Cutlery sets were not issued in the exact same year? They both contain the exact same subjects and used the same images for the basis of their sets. If you are dating the PC805 set by the photos that were used, then I would assume that you would date the PC796 set as being from the same year.

The 1960 Edition of the American Card Catalog (ACC) is the first publication that I know of that included a listing for the PC796 Sepia Postcards. AFAIK, none of the earlier ACCs included them. It listed them as being from c. 1910. The Novelty Cutlery set was not included in the publication. It was assigned its ACC number at a later date.

The Sports Collectors Bible came out in 1975. It also included the PC796 set and also dated it at c. 1910. The Novelty Cutlery set was not listed in this publication either.

The 3rd edition of The Sports Collectors Bible came out in 1979. It again listed the PC796 set as being from c. 1910 and for the first time included the Novelty Cutlery set, assigned in an ACC number of PC805 and dated it as being specifically from 1907. Not 1907-09. This is where the dating error originated.

We obviously know that the 1907 date is absolutely wrong due to the inclusion of many postcards that used photographs from after 1907, most notably that of Cobb and Wagner from the 1909 World Series.

The 4th and final edition of The Sports Collectors Bible came out in 1983 and listed the same information as they did in in the 3rd edition.

Beckett came out with their 1st edition of their Baseball Memorabilia Price Guide in 1982. It listed the PC796 Sepia set as being from 1910. It also listed the Novelty Cutlery set from being from 1910.

JL Mashburn's 1998 Sports Postcard Price Guide also lists both the PC796 Sepia set and the PC805 Novelty Cutlery sets as being from 1910.

SCD's Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards came out in 1988 and did not list either of the sets. I am not sure when they added them.

The 5th edition of their Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards came out in 2015 and included bothe sets. They listed the PC796 set as being from 1910 and the PC805 Novelty Cutlery set from being from 1907-10. I think that the standard catalog took the two dates (1907 from The Sports Collectors Bible and 1910 from Beckett) and made a range out of them. The Standard Catalog took a lot of their information straight from The Sports Collectors Bible. I think that they were astute enough to know that the set could not be from solely 1907, so they assigned a range of 1907-10 - a four year span.

So, there you have it. The PC796 Sepia set has been dated to 1910 since 1960. I have never seen a quality source use another date for it.

The PC805 set was first catalogued in 1979. It was erroneously given a date of 1907, which we unequivocally know is wrong. Beckett correctly dated the set as being from 1910 in their 1982 Guide. The Standard Catalog combined the two dates and came up with 1907-10 which has confused a lot of collectors over the years.

The grading companies have used The Standard Catalog for dating their sets since their inception since it the most comprehensive guide in our hobby. There are lots of dating mistakes in the Standard Catalog that the grading services copied - 1948 Leaf, 1947 Bond Bread, 1888 N29 Allen & Ginter, etc.

The bottom line is that I think that both of these sets were most likely issued in 1910 - possibly late 1909 after the World Series. If you disagree, that is fine and we can just agree to disagree.