Calling the OJ guys...

[Joe_G.]

The 1890 PL (and NL) cards are all re-issues of previous year's cards, no new players or poses so there was nothing new w.r.t. the subjects and poses but some of the cards did represent new variations as they were previously unknown as 1890 cards. 1890 was a historic year with lots of player movements to fill all the new teams. The 1890 cards are extremely rare, many may be unique. N172s ceased to be produced when Duke gobbled up Goodwin along with A&G, Kinney, and Kimball in April of 1890 (ATC formation). The baseball season had barely begun when production and distribution ended.

The realized prices exceeded my expectations. Many of the 1890 cards have poor image quality. In most cases better image qualities could be easily found by collecting an earlier year but clearly the rarity and historical significance of the PL helped push the higher hammer prices.

In short, no OJ collectors collect all the variations of all the cards but enough are attracted to the historical significance and intrigue of the 1890 rarities to push the PL cards to a much higher plateau than the more common variants issued in previous years.