1902-1911 W600 Sporting Life Cabinets

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Posted By: Richard

Greetings everyone. I am looking for some detailed info on the W600 Sporting life set. I have read it was issued over a span of 8 years or so. I was wondering if I could find information on what year each player was issued.
Look forward to some replies.
Thanks

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Posted By: David McDonald

Ask and ye shall receive. http://www.oldcardboard.com/w/w600/w600list.asp
Issue #8 of Old Cardboard has an article entitled "1902-11 W600 Sporting Life Cabinets: Overview of a Rare and Important Set" by Jerry Spillman. Lot of good information.

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Posted By: Rhett Yeakley

Richard, do you have a login for each card you own? Every time you ask a question your id changes. I don't have a problem with it or anything but have been meaning to ask.
-Rhett

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Posted By: scott brockelman

I have literature from SL that indicates they were offered as late as 1913. Probably not new players, just leftovers from previous print runs.

Scott

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Posted By: Richard

Thanks guys for the great info. I appreciate it. David, I never knew this detailed info was available for each card issued. This is amazing. They started to issue cards in 1902. The last year of issue on this list is 1911.
Thanks! Will have to grab OC issue #8.

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Posted By: Kevin Struss

Richard, I think that the Old Cardboard list refers to the first year that a card of a the specific player was offered to the public. Many of these theoretical cards were obviously never ordered nor saved over the years as there are lots of cards on that list that do not exist today.

Once the Sporting Life issued a card, they continued to offer it in subsequent years. I believe that 1911 was the last year that any new players were added.

Scott is right, the Sporting Life continued to offer cards past 1911 - they just did not add any new players to the mix.

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Posted By: Paul

Kevin,

Does that mean that you could still order an Ed Delahanty through 1911 and maybe even beyond?

Paul

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Posted By: scott brockelman

I believe the list of what was available in the later years was made up of left over stock and got shorter as time went by. I just looked at a 1913 renewal offer where by renewing for $2.00 to Sporting Life you would get a dozen cabinets included. The list available was about 200 players. Delehanty was not included. There was a statement "We have no others. This is our complete list".

Scott

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Posted By: Kevin Struss

Paul, I cannot find Delahanty in any of the lists that I have past 1903. There are two possible reasons for this: 1) they pulled his card after his death in July of 1903 or 2) they had exhausted their initial production supply of Delahanty and did not produce any more. Delahanty was a very notable player and would have been a popular choice among customers in 1902-03.

I believe that the Sporting Life continued to offer cards of "old players" as long as their supply lasted.

It is fairly obvious that the Sporting Life produced a certain number of each player at specific time. For example, Luis Castro only played one year in the Major Leagues - Philadelphia Athletics in 1902. Since a plethora of Philadelphia Athletic players were included by the Sportin Life (a Philadelphia company) in thier 1902 offering, Castro was included. He was obviously not a popular choice among their subscribers and his card (which is dated 1902 on it) was offered by ths Sporting Life at least through the 1910 season.

Scott, is Castro still being offered on your 1913 renewal offer?

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Posted By: scott brockelman

No he is not on 1913 list. He is a very interesting player, he actually only played part of the season and some believe him to be the first Cuban player. I do not think many of his W600's were purchased, I have seen/own only 1 and heard of 1 other.

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Posted By: Matt

Scott - would it be possible to post a scan of the 1913 advert?
thanks!

My Trade/Sale Page

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Posted By: Paul

Kevin and Scott,

Thank you both. That's very helpful. It is interesting that you could have obtained a Castro "of 1902" card for almost a decade. I wonder if that is true of some of the major stars as well. It sounds like it must be. But it also makes sense that Sporting Life would not update the card of a particular player until its supply of the original version of that card was exhausted. So, for example, Jennings with Detroit probably wasn't produced until all the Jennings with Philadelphias were gone. At least, that makes sense to me.

Paul

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Posted By: scott brockelman

Matt, I don't think it will scan up very good for presentation here, the piece is fairly large with very small text. I think it will be unreadable but I may try.

Paul, that may be true. I have a few different large "flyers" with players offered. I shall see if I can ID the different years of publication and see any player/team differences.

Scott

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Posted By: Kevin Struss

Paul, the Sporting Life was very diligent in updating the teams of its subjects, at least in its advertisements. For example, they originally offered Chesbro with a Pittsburg designation in 1902, but as soon as jumped to New York AL in 1903, the Sporting Life listed him with that team in their flyers. What we do not know is whether they continued to send out the cards listing him with Pittsburg until they ran out. The Sproting Life was a thrifty company, so my gut guess is that they did.

The example of Castro is not unique. Whenever the Sporting Life would print the list of current players available, they would organize them by team. Also, at the end of each advertisement would be a list of "Other Noted Players" which would consist of players who were retired, such as Castro, but were still available. As the the years went on, this list ballooned to hundreds of players. Interestingly, no teams were listed in the advertisement for these players. As you would guess, this list was maily comprised of lesser known players who would not have been popular choices with the fans, thus leaving the Sporting Life with inventory of their cards to get rid of after the fact.

Jerry Spillman's wonderful article in Old Cardbaoard notes that some players had as many as four cards listing them with different teams over the years.

There is no doubt that the Sporting Life was meticulous in updating the teams of its subjects, but it was also very frugal and was certainly not going to waste any cards that had already been printed up.

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

The last players to be added to the W600 checklist was in 1911 - these players were:

Burde CreeNew York A. L.Played 1908-15
Joshua DeVoreNew York N. L.Played 1908-13

There are no known surviving W600s of these players. However in 1913 I think there was another player added. I will look through my files........

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Posted By: packs

Are the original 1902 examples from the set the most desirable? I have the Patsy Donovan from 1902 when he was on St. Louis in his street clothes. I've been told that the St. Louis street clothes variation is one of the toughest from the set because it had to be released and order at the very beginning of the print run. Is that true or does the issuing year not matter because you could take up to a decade to order some of the cards? I figure Donovan was probably a very popular player and his cards might have sold fast.

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

This is the one!

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Posted By: leon

Jerry gets today's NET54 award!!! Showing the seldom seen Brockelman T-shirt W600.....very rare indeed.

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Posted By: Kevin Struss

packs, I do not thing that the street clothes version of Donovan is especially difficult. I have an image of a PSA 2 - not sure if it would be yours or not. That being said, most all Sporting Life cards are very scarce - I just do not think that Donovan is any tougher than most of the other subjects.

Some collectors like the 1902 cards, but many others like to have players pictured in uniforms, which would generally be the later versions. I think that most collectors are happy with a card from any of the years that the Sporting Life issued a card for the player that they are looking to find.

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Posted By: Richard

Good evening everyone. I wanted to ask some of these experts on the W600 set about Miller Huggins. What year was he first issued? I look forward to your response.
Thanks

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Posted By: Kevin Struss

Richard, the link that David posted above will answer your question. Huggins was first issued in 1906.

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Posted By: Bob Beyerle

While on the topic of W600's, I thought this a good time to ask again. Has anyone ever seen a Hans Lobert W600? I've been looking for almost 10 years now.

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Posted By: robert a

Is that Brockelman in uniform or street clothes?