Reference Books on 19th Century & Pre-WWII Cards?

[FrostyCollects]

Hello everyone,

I've been long fascinated with those early vintage cards for decades but I couldn't allow myself to get started on collecting something high-priced due to my progressive vision loss (no time left for long-term commitments) and bad completist tendencies. It just never occured to me until recent...have there ever been any great photoreference guides on such cards? If so, can you please provide a list of such books? Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[ValKehl]

I think the Old Cardboard Magazine web site would be quite helpful to you: http://www.oldcardboard.com/
Val

[FrostyCollects]

Thank you, Val! Not aware of that website before.

Upon first glance, I noticed Hess made some back in 1888. Never knew that part about Hess even though I learned a lot about the company while living in Rochester, NY for almost 2 decades. Nifty.

Also nifty to see the earliest known Cy Young card (1893 Just So).

Going to spend a good amount of time browsing that site on my iPad...

[drc]

Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards (Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards) by Bob Lemke, in print book see amazon.com, checklists all the individual cards in the sets, with little black and white pictures. Be warned it's small print.

[Wite3]

Photographic Baseball Cards of Goodwin and Co. is great if you want to see Old Judge pictures. Jay Miller et. al.
Frank Slocum's large coffee table book, Classic Baseball Cards, has many color photos of prewar sets and is a great visual reference. Out of print but can still be found every now and then on ebay or Amazon.

Joshua

[HOF Auto Rookies]

I know of a book my dad helped as a reference towards the Old Judge set. He is an expert on vintage photography and helped track down the specifics and negatives of the cards depicted. Gorgeous book, I'll update this when I find out the exact title.

[HOF Auto Rookies]

Here is the book info, I believe only 100 copies were made, my dad is checking on whether there is a second edition

“The Photographic Baseball Cards of Goodwin & Company (1886 - 1890)”

Authors: Jay Miller, Joe Gonsowski and Richard Masson.