FS $12.000 1913 WG5 National Baseball Game Complete EX

[BobC]

Originally Posted by nolemmings

Thanks for sharing--it's a remarkable grouping. I'm kind of with Bob on the Barker-back card, since there is a known Fenway Brew scoring card that carries a National Game back. I am curious, why are there two Bakers in your set--one with with the FB ad and one without? Are there 54 or 55 cards being offered? In any event, best of luck on the sale.

EDITED TO ADD: Never mind the count, I see you posted scans of 55 cards. I still wonder if the Baker FB card was an extra, header type card that was not supposed to be used in the "game".

Hey Todd,

In this case, I believe the Baker Fenway Breweries card absolutely was supposed to be in that set. I have a National Game set box myself, but it does not have the Fenway Breweries reference on it as Carol and Lenny's game box does, which can easily be seen in the image they included of it. The old SCD catalogs described this special version of the set as having only the Baker card, Score Card, and the game box itself, including and indicating a reference to Fenway Breweries, so that falls in line with assuming a Fenway Breweries game box would also include the FB versions of the Baker and Score cards. The head scratcher is why the set Carol and Lenny have includes the two FB cards, but that the FB Score Card is from the other set that was being put out at that time, the Tm Barker Game set. If memory serves, both those games I believe were actually printed/manufactured by the same company, at the same time, in 1913. So, the question is, could this single Tom Barker Game card have been accidently put into a National Game set at the factory by some mistake so that it was originally sold that way, or is it possible that after the set was originally sold and after over 100 years, could someone else have maybe replaced the FB Score Card for the National Game set that ended up missing somehow, and could only find a Tom Barker version of the FB Score Card to replace it with?

Doubt we'll ever be able to find an exact, correct answer to this question. But again, based on known and accepted knowledge of this set, it appears that it is technically not a complete National Game FB set, due to the one card being from a different game set. Still a very rare and huge item to pick up. If it were mine, i would be very happy to own it, and would probably look around to see if I could find the National Game version of the FB Score Card to replace the Tom Barker version, and technically complete the set then.