134 Year Old Treasure Hunt Yields an Exciting Discovery!

[Joe_G.]

Congrats Tanner on the large GQ Kelly, a great card, and the program is also amazing. Excellent work on connecting the dots, thank you for sharing in such a grand way. There is absolutely no question that these large GQs are directly connected to the California Tour. I thoroughly enjoyed your write-up.

That California tour was quite a mixed bag of serious and halfhearted play. Ewing proved to not be a very effective pitcher as well.

Goodwin's Gypsy Queen brand was very popular on the West Coast with Goodwin's west coast agent, Albert Mau & Co., being an aggressive advertiser. Method of distribution for these large GQ cards is still a mystery. I believe the team photos you reference were just that, cabinets of the team for which beautiful examples survive in the hobby today (with no affiliation to Goodwin). The large GQs are too big to fit in a pack of cigarettes. Perhaps they were sent as point of sale give-a-ways for Albert Mau and others selling the brand. It would be quite unusual for Goodwin to send these oversized cards for direct sale or give-a-way at the ball park.

Shortly after the California tour, GQ would help distribute an even rarer set during the final week(s) of 1887 and into early 1888, the GQ California League player cards. An example of McDonald is shown in our book, another pair surfaced back in 2014 although trimmed at bottom.

Later in 1888, another popular west coast brand, Creole cigarettes from SF Hess, would release their N321 (August 1888) and N338-1 cards (November 1888). Fast forward to 1889 and you see the Old Judge California League cards but those, unlike all the previous, may not have been a west coast only issue (but still extremely rare).

I'll stop here as my commentary is a bit of a tangent. If there is interest in the GQ adverts, I could post them here.