1904 Allegheny Set

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Posted By: Nathan

Does anyone have cards from this set?

I am curious about the story behind the set if anyone knows?

Thanks,
Nathan

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

I have one card:





There was only ONE set of these cards ever discovered, so the common theory is that this one set was produced and sent to the U.S. Patent Office...

but then for some reason the company never produced any more of them...

and then eventually someone "removed" the one set of cards from the patent office and brought them to the marketplace.

I know that the current asking price from one dealer for a very nice HOF card from this set is $20,000.

Thankfully I got mine for much less... but I think this dealer's price is probably indicative of the current market price for Hall of Famers in this set.

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Posted By: Nathan

Thanks for the pixes...A truly unique item!

I assume the whole set was in fantastic condition?

Nathan

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Yes, all of the cards that I have seen were in pristine condition...

which of course they would be if they just sat in a box on a shelf in the patent office for 80 years.

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Posted By: Jason

This is the only one I have. I believe they are all hand cut.

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Posted By: Andy Baran

Hal,

That Brown card is beautiful. I wonder where you got it.

Would you mind sharing which dealer and which card has an asking price of $20,000? The market value for these cards is not nearly that high, even for a Wagner or Mathewson.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Andy:

I don't want to disclose anything that might get anyone miffed at me...

as this dealer is a great guy and has been very friendly and helpful to a LOT of people in our hobby.

The HOF card was a ROOKIE card and NOT Mordecai Brown... which leaves Evers, Tinker and Bresnahan. It was one of those three.

The dealer will not budge on his price. Maybe it was because he knows me and how much I pay for cards...

but according to him, NOBODY will get the card from him for anything less than $20,000.

I certainly harbor no ill will towards the dealer, as he is free to do whatever he wants with his cards, and I look forward to buying from him in the future.

But I guess you are right in that there is a difference between the "price" of a card and the "market value" of that same card.

The "price" for a card is whatever the owner says it is.

The "market value" for a card is whatever a person is willing to pay for the card.

I wasn't willing to pay $20,000 for the card ... so the market value must be somewhere LESS than the asking price.

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Posted By: Max Weder

Does anyone have the patent or trademark information for this game?

Since I don't know anything about the game, I'm not sure why it would have to be patented (unless there was a special way proposed to put the cards in kids' bikes back in 1904...) but in any event, a patent before 1975 can't be searched on-line unless you have the patent number or current classification (http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-adv.htm).

I tried to search to see if any of the game images were registered as a trademark, but got hopelessly booleaned, with none of the 829 listings for "Allegheny" appearing to relate to the game (http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=nt53sc.1.1)

If anyone has any information on the registration, I'd love to see it.

Thanks,

Max

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Posted By: HW

$20,000 - wow, I believe that this is more than the whole 104 card set sold for when it was sold in its entirety 10 or so years ago.

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Posted By: Scott Elkins

inflation. No seriously, it might be a case like me passing on some Croft's Cocoa cards on eBay and being outbid earlier this year - at times, I just didn't have the extra money due to other purchases and obligations. Also, other ones I passed on, I am still kicking myself for. Now, I would gladly pay the buyers of these cards a NICE PROFIT for the cards I bid on and was outbid. Sometimes people just realize too late they should have bid higher!

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Posted By: Scott

I bought two of these several years ago for about $400 each, sold them for a tad more, and don't regret it. I never liked game cards much unless they had one of those cool little guys riding a bicycle.

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Posted By: Julie

Cost me 399.99 (plus California tax...)

You do know there's only the National League, right? And they WERE all cut by hand; those players who were stars were given more careful cutting than those who weren't. Since Gleason's main claim to fame is that he managed the Blacksox (1919), nobody had heard of him yet...

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Posted By: Paul

There's one more Allegheny card posted on another thread -- the Frank Selee, posted on the BB Card Hall of Fame thread. Happily, it is mine.

To answer Max's question, it is unlikely that anyone would have tried to patent this game. The backs of the cards state that they were "registered" on April 5, 1904. "Registered" usually refers to a trademark. The Allegheny company probably registered the name "Allegheny" as its trademark, meaning that no one else could use the name Allegheny on baseball card games. (They would have to use different names, like Fan Craze).

The Patent Office handles trademarks as well as patents. So it is possible that the Allegheny company sent a set of these cards to the Patent Office as part of the process of registering their trademark. In order to register a trademark, the Patent Office requires you to send in samples of your product featuring your trademark. But I don't think they sent in the exact set that was part of the Copeland collection (the cards pictured on this website). These cards had to be printed after the trademark registration process was complete. They say right on them that they were registered on April 5, 1904. So the trademark was registered before this set was printed. I know of no reason why anyone would have sent the set to the Patent Office after the trademark was registered.

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Posted By: hankron

Paul is correct. A manufacturer of games or hats or kites might choose to trademark a unique name or design by sending in samples. However, this set does not appear to be samples sent to the Patent Office. As Paul noted, the registration date is printed on the cards, and a company had to send in the product samples before getting a trade mark ... This does not proclude the set from being the company's prototype for a set never issued. It is not ucommon for companies to jump through the copyright and trademark hoops for products that may or may not reach the market.

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Posted By: John Spencer

If memory serves Lew Lipset had a few years back an Allegheny Matty. I am a bit hazy about the final winning bid but I recall it seemed very reasonable for a one-of-a kind top HOF'er and rookie to boot (Hal?)- perhaps around $2500.

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Posted By: Scott

Kid Gleason (or had). Opinions?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=86839&item=5152710581&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Hey Julie,just because people now know Kid Gleason as the manager of the Black Sox doesnt mean back then he wasnt famous,its actually quite the contrary.He was a star pitcher who won 138 games,before switching to 2ndbase where he also became a star for the New York Giants.There isnt many players in baseball who have won at least 138 games and driven in over 100 runs in a season[thats called and understatement]

Besides that in 1904 he was in his 17th season,he played on 2 championship teams in Baltimore and 4 times won at least 20 games

He was one of the players made a hero for saving a family from a burning building on the way to the stadium

He was the first player traded between leagues when the AL and NL came to a 'peace treaty'

He was one of the star players expelled from the players league for signing with an NL team

He was also with another player who died on a foreign tour and Gleason himself came close to dying because they were told to drink sea water to prevent sea sickness.The other player,Tom O'Brien was a popular player among NY fans so this was a big deal back then and 3 of these events took place within 4 years of these cards being made.He played 3 more years after that[or 5 if you count brief appearances later on when he was in his 40s]

So i wouldnt say he was a nobody back then,he actually made the headlines quite often and im sure in 1904 alot of people had heard of him.I think Hals card of Mordecai Brown is proof that they didnt just pick up the cards in 1904 and handcut the stars better since Brown was a 26yr old, 9-13 career pitcher when these cards were made,it wouldve had to happen more recent,and probably much more recent if all the star players are cut better

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Posted By: Andy Baran

I believe that these cards were cut long ago, possibly right after they were printed. Essentially all of the cards have Red ink stains along their front borders, which came from the card that was stacked in front of it. I don't believe this wouldn't happen if the cards were recently cut.

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Posted By: Scott

They seem to be cut fairly well:

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Andy,it would happen if there were more than one sheet printed which is likely since i doubt they would run off one full set and give up after taking a long time to set it up.If i had to guess,i would say more than one was made but only one was handcut and saved.The stars being cut better back then because they were stars doesnt hold water because of what i said and what Scott just showed

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

(NOTE: I do NOT practice Patent Law, but I have hired an attorney recently to trademark something for me.)

I beg to differ with you guys about the "Registered" date being printed on the cards.

The way it works legally when you want to Trademark something is like this:

1) You come up with an idea, like a slogan that you want to put on a billboard. You want to Trademark it... but you also want to start using it ASAP... and the Trademark process takes forever.

2) So... you APPLY for the Trademark... which is called "REGISTERING"... and you record the date on which you "Registered" for your Trademark or Patent.

3) Now, you can start USING your slogan on billboards with a "Registered On..." date that shows everyone that you have APPLIED for a Trademark and that they had BETTER NOT copy you. If they do, then they will have to STOP as soon as your Patent is approved.

4) As long as nobody else has an earlier "REGISTERED ON" date... then your Trademark will be the one that WINS in the end. (In other words, if someone else "registers" the same slogan as you, but does it 3 weeks later... then YOU will win the Patent, regardless of whether their paperwork review process is faster than yours or not.)

SO........

This means that the Alleghany Card Company printed the one set of cards with a "Registered On" date on them, which was probably the exact same day they printed them... and which was also probably the exact same day that they mailed or carried them in to the Patent/Trademark office and APPLIED for a Trademark.

My guess is that the Trademark office DENIED their application on the basis that the subject was TOO BROAD to Trademark, or that the Alleghany Company had no ability to patent and profit the likenesses of professional baseball players.

However... it could also mean that the Alleghany Card company printed 100,000 sets of these cards, and that is why they were so WORRIED about being copied that they put the "REGISTERED" date on the front to keep other people from copying their idea.

The ONLY thing to disprove this possibility is that only ONE set of these cards has ever surfaced. Could there have been 99,999 other sets printed? Yes, absolutely.

Have they shown up anywhere in the past 99 years? NO.

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Posted By: Julie

He pitched from 1888-1895, era 3.79. After that, he batted .261. He did play for 22 years. Like i said his main claim to fame was managing the Blacksox, 1919.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

I assume you meant 1888-1895,he quit pitching because he couldnt adjust to the further distance the mound was moved to in 1894....but you said hes known more for what happened in 1919 which is correct for nowadays but wrong based on when these cards were made.Since they were made in 1904 then you judge a person by what happened up till then and i think i proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was indeed a known player and for a long time a star player by then and not just some nobody

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Posted By: Bruce Babcock

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I think you are all barking up the wrong tree. Not patent, not trademark. Copyright. One registers a copyright with the Library of Congress by sending in the item with a form and a few bucks. It is much cheaper and easier than patenting, which (if I recall the case I handled years ago) requires creation of prose and drawings showing the invention, not the item itself, discussions of prior art and presentation of a case before a patent officer.

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Posted By: Julie

being a star player: 3.79; .261. HOwever--you are right about something I was dead wrong about--all my life people have told me that Kid had an older brother, MUCH better known as a player, who played for a long time. Not true. Harry had a very brief career. Nor are there any other "Gleasons" who had long careers, who could have been father or son (and some Gleasons may have been; there were other MLB players by that name)).

But you have blunted the edge of my argument. Gleason may have not been Wagner, but he was a player of some standing--and my card is so obviously hand cut.
I have yet, however, to see a HOFer from that set, already recognized as a great player, without a very carefully cut-out card.

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Posted By: Bruce Babcock

American Caramel Gleason

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Posted By: Julie

The William Gleason (upper left-St. Louis AA, 1888) is unrelated to Kid and Harry. He has a brother named Jack, to confuse things further. Played SS, as indicated on his Scrapps card. Such confusion as there is arises from the fact that "Kid" and "Bill" were both named William, and "Bill" played for part of "Kid"'s career.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Julie i never said he did anything wrong in 1919 so why the capitalization of that?

He was a star player,his batting average is scewed by the fact he played longer than he shouldve and it suffered9.247 .227 and .143 his last 3 years) .Hes a pitcher that had 138 wins in basically 5 season with 4 20-win seasons,and he had a 100 rbi season and was well-known for the 4 things i mentioned besides the fact he was a good player in New York which isnt the same as being a good player elsewhere.He was also a 2ndbaseman not an outfielder or 1stbaseman who is supposed to put up bigger numbers.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Adam is of course correct.

You "register" for a COPYRIGHT, which is what I believe this company did on that particular date.

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Posted By: Julie

because i was afraid you thought I meant he did something wrong...jeez. I admitted I was WRONG about Gleason's status as a player; he played for 22 years, hit over 3 three times and pitched under 3 twice; he lost as many games as he won.....postings of other common players have shown that not all common players' cards were badly cut.

Oh, I changed the date from "1988" to "1888."

Gleason is one of my favorite managers; he even stuck around the White Sox 4-5 years after the scandal. Does he have to be one of my favorite players, too?

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Posted By: Brian McQueen

The red ink isn't as prominant in this example, but thanks for the insight on that, I was always sort of curious as to where that ink/dye came from.

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Posted By: Julie

to us!

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Posted By: Paul

Hal, the procedure you described of getting a trademark registered before you use the trademark has existed only since about 1990. Before that, the government would not allow you to register a trademark until you had actually used it on your product. So the Allegheny folks did not use that procedure.

As far as copyrights go, it is possible that the Allegheny company registered copyrights in these cards -- but only if they actually took the photographs themselves, or (very unlikely) if they thought the design of the card was so cool that they should protect the design with a copyright. But, until very recently, the copyright laws required the copyright owner to use the word "copyright" or the letter "c" in a circle on their cards, works of art, etc. The word "registered" just wouldn't do the trick and would result in a complete loss of all copyrights. So, I don't think the word "registered" on the cards has anything to do with copyrights.

Now, back to a discussion of vintage baseball cards ...