1913 Lajoie game card.

[Jay Wolt]

Just checked the SGC pops

Lajoie 253 graded w/ 113 SGC-96/98's

Nat'l Game 602 w/ 115 SGC-96/98's

Tom Barker 440 w/ 64 SGC-96's (No 98's)

Based on the pops of PSA & SGC for these three 1913 game sets, the Lajoie set has the fewer graded examples by far

[Brian Van Horn]

Jay,

My concern is not about population reports, but why so many survived in so good of shape. Now, I see on the rules for the "game" it says copyright 1913. I also have to wonder if the cards and the rules are from one and the same game. I am not an expert on games. My worry is about the print on the back, the paper and the high number of high quality cards from the set. Admittedly, the ones you have in the picture exhibit some wear, but the ones generally offered are in high quality. This doesn't usually happen with 102 year old cards.

[Paul S]

My two were kept raw for decades - I sold them just a few years ago in that same state. They were nearly identical except one had a corner crease, just as I originally received it. Otherwise, the would both had graded quite high.

[Brian Van Horn]

Originally Posted by Paul S

My two were kept raw for decades - I sold them just a few years ago in that same state. They were nearly identical except one had a corner crease, just as I originally received it. Otherwise, the would both had graded quite high.

Paul,

I appreciate it. Your guess of 1966 may be right, but only time and Hasbro's records of Parker Brothers toys may tell and that may not even have the answer.

[Paul S]

Brian, No problem. All my cards are/were raw. I can tell you that the Lajoies were never handled, by me, nearly as much as my T205-6s, caramels, '33 Goudeys or '39 Play Balls - that factor may translate to how other people treated their cards and why the Lajoies held up so well....plus the playing cards are so much more sturdy.

[Brian Van Horn]

Originally Posted by Paul S

Brian, No problem. All my cards are/were raw. I can tell you that the Lajoies were never handled, by me, nearly as much as my T205-6s, caramels, '33 Goudeys or '39 Play Balls - that factor may translate to how other people treated their cards and why the Lajoies held up so well....plus the playing cards are so much more sturdy.

I love hearing from a fellow raw card collector. The cards are harder to sell a lot of times, but I just do not submit them for grading. Any graded cards you see in my listings someone else submitted.

[clydepepper]

Does this discussion call into question the authenticity of any other playing cards sets?

Since the third-party grading companies are a fairly recent development, we know that any of the playing cards from 1884's Lawson to the 1968 Topps game set would have been in raw state for a number of years. The cards in every set have rounded corners - which is a clear advantage to avoiding dings and thus at least somewhat results in less obvious wear.

I have several cards from several different playing card sets and have always used them as an economical way to collect Hall-of-Famers 'active' cards. Almost all of mine are graded including the three I won in Leon's August Auction and my most recent addition, a 1968 Mantle.

Heck, is even the Allegeheny in question?

[Butch7999]

The National-American Base Ball Game, known in some of its forms as"the Nap Lajoie game," was actually the title
of several different games, produced -- under both identical and varying titles, employing both identical and varying
graphics -- by Parker Brothers starting in 1913.

We just did a whole thing this past spring on the whole family of related cardgames at our own site, if you want to visit there
for the full story. We also corresponded at some length several years ago with former Parker Brothers vice-president and
historian Phil Orbanes (now running Winning Moves Games -- http://www.winning-moves.com/ ), who helped greatly with
our games research. In hands-on checking of actual Parker in-house catalogues and inventories, Orbanes confirmed that
National-American first appeared in 1913 and remained in production through at least 1925. Good luck, by the way, getting
any assistance from Hasbro, who are about as willing to give out information as the CIA.

The card typography was relatively "modern" at the time but is completely consistent with a 1913 date of origin.

Tony Fatseas did repro sets of the 1906 WG2 and WG3 Fan Craze games about ten years ago, "Card Memorabilia Associates"
produced a repro set of the 1913 WG6 Tom Barker Baseball Card Game in 1973, and Larry Fritsch Cards has done a repro
of that set and many others, but we're not aware of any repro editions of "the Lajoie game." That's not to say with absolute
certainty there aren't any out there; we can't prove a negative. But it was a very popular game, produced in large quantities,
for several years (the image of Lajoie was replaced by that of a generic batter in later editions), and the explanations
provided above by other guys here cover, to our satisfaction, most of the reasons that sharp examples are still available
in abundance. Bear in mind as well, the cards were sold as a set, not individually, to be used for game play, not for flipping
or being put in bicycle spokes, so they were inevitably handled less frequently and more gently.