Oldest commercially produced baseball card?

[Leon]

There are other cards produced earlier but you will quickly get into semantics. This one had all paid players though I know there is debate every which way, on what a first card is. This is usually considered one of them, though there is a type of this one that might be months? earlier with a different address, though I am not sure that is definitive or not.

[barrysloate]

The Peck & Snyders can certainly be considered the first baseball cards, but we are not certain how they were distributed. We know they were available at their stores on Ann Street and Nassau Street in NYC, but may not have been found anywhere else. They very well may have been unknown to baseball fans living outside the city.

The first baseball cards with more of a national distribution would have been the Old Judges, which first appeared in 1886.

[drcy]

Peck & Snyder team CDVs were also available via mail order I believe through their catalog.

There are always unanswered questions and debatable details, but I'd pick the Peck & Snyders. There are earlier cards, but there are questions about them, whether game passes count or whether it's a cricket or baseball image. Some people say trade cards don't count as baseball cards-- however, kids collected trade cards back then. Kid's scrapbooks are filled with trade cards, along with scraps, die cuts and trading cards.

No can know for sure and people have different definitions, but Peck & Snyders are a good pick.

I don't think national distribution is a definer. Regional baseball cards are still baseball cards. Though Old Judges were clearly distributed to the general public + have product advertising on them.

It's notable that commercially sold and collected CDVs of celebrities (politicians, generals, actors, writers, inventors) were made during the Civil War. Someday a baseball version may be discovered. There is a civil war era Mathew Brady CDV of Sam ad Harry Wright, but it's debated if it counts as a baseball or cricket image. Sam was a cricketer and his son Harry played both.

There are early baseball CDVs, but we don't know how they were distributed. They could have been sold to the general public, but we don't know. I'm not one for taking leaps of faith.

Lastly, there are Civil War and earlier stereoview cards showing baseball games and they were commercially sold to the public. Though some won't consider these baseball cards. Even I would consider them something else.

Early baseball cards can be called baseball card theory.

Also realize that terms like baseball card, rookie card and pre-rookie card are later coined and defined terms that we apply retroactively. There's nothing organic and eternal about the term rookie card. The hobby made it up in modern times then applied it backwards.

[benjulmag]

If one takes the position that P&S would distribute ice skate verso cards at the time of the year when customers would be looking to purchase winter equipment, I've never understood why the Red Stocking ice skate verso would predate the baseball verso. The Red Stockings achieved national prominence as the 1869 season progressed. So unless the first P&S Red Stockings card appeared at the end of the 1869 season (when an ice skate ad might make sense), why would that be the first issuance of the card? Because of the Ann Street address? Do we know for certain that P&S didn't operate two stores simultaneously for a while? Unless we know for certain they did not, it seems logical that the black baseball verso was the first printing, appearing during the 1869 season, the ice skate verso the second, appearing winter 1869-70, and the red verso the third, appearing during the 1870 season when P&S introduced colored inks. Other than speculation, are there any facts that conclusively establish the ice skate verso as the first printing?

[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

So we are looking at late 1860s to early 1870s for the first cards?

[Baseball Rarities]

The 1869 Cincinnati CDV and trade cards has always been one of my favorite "cards" in the hobby. I have images of a few ads from contemporary magazines that show the following addresses for Peck & Snyder:

1865-1868: 105 Nassau St.
1869: 22 Ann St.
1870 on: 126 Nassau St.

Here are my thoughts:

CDV's that have either Peck and Snyder (22 Ann St.) or Chadwick's Base Ball Book of Reference ads on the back come from the season of 1869.

The Peck and Snyder trade cards with the ice skating on back (22 Ann St.) come from winter of 1869.

The Peck and Snyder trade cards with all other advertising and 126 Nassau St. on the back come from 1870-71.

CDV's pre-dated trade cards and were obviously much easier and cheaper to produce. I think that the success of the initial run of CDV's with advertising on the backs in 1869 led to the production of the trade cards in 1870 and 1871. No doubt additional generic CDV's were printed after 1869 as well.

[barrysloate]

Hi Kevin- the Cincinnati Red Stockings disbanded after the 1870 season. Do you think P & S was still issuing cards of them at that time?