E91

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Posted By: Mrc32

What do people think about the E-91 set? Is there a large group of collectors for this set? I had heard that the set turned a lot of people off becuase it doesn't actually use drawings of the real players and has a "fake design" as Lipsett puts it in his book.

I sort of like the way the cards look.

What do others think about this set? Would it be hard/expensive to put together?

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Posted By: jay behrens

Personaly, it's one of the ugliest sets out there. It'sa cheap way to get some top tier HOFers if you don't mind the fact that the card doesn't look anything like the player. I don't know all the vagaries of the set as far as scarcities, etc, but it shouldn't be too hard to complete. There always seems to be a decent number of available on eBay.

Jay

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Posted By: Patrick McMenemy

For those of you that may not know, cards in the first or E91A series actually DO reflect likenesses of the players.

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Posted By: petecld

It's a little sad this set doesn't get a little more respect. Jay is right, it isn't a pretty set but it was the first set of Baseball players since the E107 set and the success of this set kicked off the "golden age" of E-cards - 1909-1911.

Set "A" gets some respect and collector interest for the reason that Patrick mentioned, the faces do match the names on the card. The "B:" and "C" sets are collected mostly by the hard-core collectors but done seem to generate much interest from newer collectors.

As mentioned before, if you want a HoF player for your collection and don't have a lot of $$$ to spend this is a good set to look at.

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Posted By: shammus

I would agree with Patrick. The likenesses used in the "A" subset were supposed to resemble the actual player, cartoon-like or not. The problem is those exact same "cartoons" or very similar ones were used for completely different players on entirely different teams when the B and C sets were produced.

Many prewar enthusiasts obviously like collecting early cards of Hall of Famers. However in this set, cards of most of the big names (ie...Johnson, Baker, Speaker, Wagner...etc...) didn't come along until sets B and C. Based on that fact, I think that many collectors realize that most of the HOFers in the e91 set weren't accurate likenesses of the players themselves, making the set sort of "uncollectable" in some hobbyists eyes.

As far as collectibility, in my opinion, this is the easiest set to put together. e90-1 cards are generally readily available as well but when you collect e90-1 cards you eventually hit a point where it becomes necessary to obtain some VERY difficult cards to complete the set. (Speaker, Mitchell, etc...). There are no difficult cards like these as far as I am aware of in the e91 set, so I would bill it as the easiest "e" set to put together.

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Posted By: brian p

The points made by Patrick, Pete and Shammus are valid. Long ago I took the hint of Lipset in his article on this set in his Encylopedia and actually tried to find out if the artwork on the cards actually was representative of the the actual player. Because of the repetition of twenty of the same player attributions in the series B set, it makes it possible that 53 of the 99 cards in the set might actually have likenesses that correspond to the player listed on the card. What I found out, using only the Classic Baseball Cards book as a guide, was that about 2/3rd's of these 53 cards utilized artwork based directly (but only the head of the player) upon photographic images as seen in other card sets from the era. And the majority of the rest can be subjectively determined to represent the stated player based upon comparision of the photos and artwork (keeping in mind the consistent stylized renderings that were used throughout the set).

I have actually written an article about this set, but I just haven't gotten around to revising it--it has been sitting around for months. Having the VCBC in such a state of limbo sure hasn't inspired me to get my tookus in motion either.


Brian

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Posted By: runscott

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Posted By: brian p

As you can see, Scott has graphically illustrated that these images did not just get fabricated. This is the only one I have seen that used the full body pose...there might be others, I just used the mostly head shot photos available in card issues when comparing the cards versus the photos. You have to admit that the artist even captured a good likeness of Reulbach's facial profile. Boy, has the E91 set gotten a bad rap.

Brian

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Posted By: jay behrens

The ruelbach card is the exception and not the rule. The reason the set gets a bad rap is because there is numerous art that is used 3 and 4 times in the set with the only change being the name of the team across the chest of the player.

Jay

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Posted By: shammus

Well keep in mind though that the Reulbach was printed in 1908 for set A. Sets B and C were printed in 1909 and 1910 and basically consisted of the exact artwork from the cards in set A and assigned them to entirely different players on different teams. Like Jay said, the only thing changing would be the teamname on the players chest. Maybe if American Caramel had left well enough alone with Set A, the set wouldn't have such a bad rap today.

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Posted By: B c D

Maybe the pose that denotes the actual player used to copy for the fake ones should be considered more valueable being as it is obvious some are real poses in that cartoon type format!