N172 Old Judge Question

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Posted By: Peck

What is wrong with my Old Judge California league checklist? It differs from the one mentioned above. Do I have someone listed wrong?

Oakland (6) - Daily, Dooley, Fudger, Long, McDonald, & O'Neal

Sacramento (6) - Breckenridge, Hapeman, Kremmeyer, O'Day, Sylvester, & Veach

SanFrancisco (7) - Donahue, Doyle, Levy, Meegan, Perrier, Powers, & Stockwell

A thought and a question:

The 24 card sheet could contain 8 players from each team above.

If unchecklisted cards were known to exist or in the collections of the Old Judge collectors would it be to their benefit to make the cards known?

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Posted By: barrysloate

I believe only 19 California League players are known, so I think you've got them all. It's certainly possible that some of them are lost forever, with no surviving examples.

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Posted By: Jay

It is also possible, though less likely, that some players were double printed or that other non-California League players were on the same sheet(if in fact all 19 known California League players were on the same sheet to start with).

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Posted By: Steve Murray

If you as a collector had an uncatalogued California League card what would you do? Out it or keep mum?

My take on it is that the card would likely be unique so what's the harm in outing it.

Edited to say that this is one of the more interesting and on-topic threads of late.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I don't really understand the secrecy of collectors who have an uncataloged card and keep it secret. What purpose does hiding the card serve?

I also don't understand the overall secretiveness of the bigtime OJ collectors. It just strikes me as greedy and self-serving. On the otherhand T206 collectors seem to share everything they know about the set.

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Posted By: barrysloate

There are pretty much no secrets left regarding the T206 set.

Old Judges, on the other hand, still have some mysteries and unknown rarities. Whether collectors who know these secrets choose to share them is a personal choice. Some feel keeping an unknown card uncatalogued adds more value to it. That may or may not be true, but that is the thought process behind it.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

If TRex Ted collected N172 there would be no secrets about the set anymore.

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Posted By: Mike

I had an unc. card of a top hall of famer. I showed it on here, and no one gave a rip. I think one person replyed. Sometimes I get the feeling that people don't consider unc. cards, or cards that aren't in the 40Lb. price guide to be real cards. That some how they are freaks. Any other thoughts on this?

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Posted By: barrysloate

Don't remember the card, sorry. But with some sets it's expected that new cards will be found. If someone found a T206 Connie Mack, that would be major news.

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Posted By: Peck

I can think of a few reasons why collectors may not want to out an uncatalogued card. A fair amount of baseball material is made available to the market by antique dealers & other collectors with no background knowledge of baseball history. They grab a price guide and slap on a price. If they can't find it in a price guide they might just take a good guess. Some collectors would rather keep these guys guessing.

I think Barry hit on my second reason. I had a couple of minor uncatalogued cards (Esskay Orioles)in the early 1980's that I had added to the Beckett price guide. When the new Beckett came out they were assigned the same price as the rest of the common cards in the set. I thought the price assigned was low. I did sell them at a good multiple of the Beckett price in an SCD phone auction though.

If I were to find other unc. cards I would share the information with collectors but I think I would pass on providing copies or scans to the price guides.

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Posted By: Jay

I am of the belief that new Old Judge cards(there's a cartophilic oxymoron), both new players and variations of existing players, should be disclosed. That is the reason that the Cartophilic Society cataloging of the Old Judge set was updated several years ago with several of us being actively involved. Does this affect card values--maybe a little but not alot. A new California League card will sell for a big number, regardless of whether it is listed in a catalog or not. A new pose for virtually all people collecting Old Judge is no big deal so, disclosed or not, it should not impact its value much at all.

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Posted By: Mike

The unc. card mentioned a couple messages back, was an unc. Foxx card from 29 or 30. Also found with it was a Grove, along with others. I guess I would consider them to be fair to decent players. These were origianly sold by Leon. A reputable source I would say. Quite a while back I also posted an Unc. Old judge. Again, no one said much. There are many collectors out there who have a lot of things like these. It never seems to stir up much excitement. So, for those that say people are hording, or are being selfish in not sharing, I would sometimes disagree with that statement. If I had my way, everything would be in the one ton price guide, and there would be no unc. cards.

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Posted By: JAy

Mike--The Old Judge set has almost 520 different players who are represented by over 2450 different poses. When you add in the different ways of presenting the name, team and position and the different Old Judge ad banners on the card we are talking about over 10,000 "different" cards. Finding a new player in the set would be very exciting. Finding a new team variation(player listed for the first time on a particular team) or a new pose would be somewhat exciting for those who collect these. Finding any other unlisted variation would have little interest to anyone, even the most anal of Old Judge collectors.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Jay- I think it depends on the nature of the find. If you found a card of an obscure player with a comma after his name and that is the first one known with a comma, there would be virtually no interest.

But if you found a Cap Anson batting pose or an Amos Rusie portrait, that would be major news.

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Posted By: Dylan

What's the highest an OJ has sold for at auction?

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Posted By: barrysloate

At auction a California league player sold for over 100K on ebay. I don't know if there has been a higher private sale.