1888 S. F. Hess (N321) card controversy ends....it's FREE, at last it's FREE of TPG

[oaks1912]

Lets try to make this as simple as possible. There are currently three types of N-321 SF Hess Color California League cards that are documented. Up until the early 80’s only one style was documented of these relatively scarce cards. In 1983, Lew Lipset published “The Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards, Volume 1, 19th Century Cards” . THe SF Hess N-321 set was covered on pages 51 & 52 and contains no mention of variation in printing, cut or paper stock. The cards that Lipset illustrated in his book are regular insert cards (Type-1), that is, they contain the SF Hess & Company ad along the bottom border, and the “Copyright 1888” line in red along the bottom border, just inside the frame (Note : I can verify Type 1 examples of Hanley, McCord and H.Smith which do NOT have the “Copyright 1888” line) . They are printed on a sturdy stock of paper... Shortly after Lew’s book was released, I was at a National Convention (either ’83 Chicago or ’84 Parsippany) and found a box of 19th Century cards on a dealer’s table, including several of the N-321 cards. These cards however appeared different. They were all handcut, they did not contain the SF Hess & Company logo along the bottom and they did not include the “Copyright 1888”.... The dealer recognized that these were handcut, and gave me a fair price on the group, which included duplicates.... I went over to the table of friend Dick Dobbins to show him the cards and ask what he thought. Although Dobbins had not seen this group for sale at the National, he did indicate that he had picked up a few of these style cards (Without the ad or copyright) from other sources before and was confident of their authenticity. This and a few follow up discussions with Dick, we decided to refer to these as “Type-2, Advertising sheets cards” At the time few people cared, and even fewer were aware that they existed...... Sometime in the 1990’s, pioneer Bay Area dealer Dennis King offered a group of about 30 / 31 of the N-321 cards to me. His group looked like the regular insert cards, however they were printed on significantly thinner stock of paper. Dennis indicated that these had been acquired years earlier as part of a large 19th / early 20th century paper collection. We could not meet on a price and this group was eventually sold to Terry Knouse. Although I do not have xeroxs of those cards, some colors appeared to be muted, most I recall being handcut and all were on extremely thin paper stock. This variety was referred to as Type -3. To my knowledge only one group of Type 3 cards have ever surfaced. The Type 3 cards would probably be the closest to “Proof cards”, although I would place an asterisk next to the word proof, until more supporting evidence turns up... Several years back, Legendary auctions offered a near set of N-321 Hess cards which included mostly Type 1, and some Type 2 cards. That collection is believed to be from a longtime Northern California collector who was a good friend and contemporary of Dick Dobbins. It is quite possible that the Type 2 cards in the Legendary group, and the Type 2 cards that Dobbins had (Prior to Dobbins death in 1999, he sold me his Hess group) were from the same find. Clearly the first Type is the most desirable, at least in terms of construction and aesthetics. Its at the discretion / judgement of individual collectors as to what they feel is worth the most (if anything) to them.