1913 Lajoie game card.

[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.

[scooter729]

I think the fact that games like the Lajoie game and the 1884 Lawson's game and others came in their own storage boxes greatly helped their condition.

Some of these boxes likely were never opened, and even games which were opened and played with were likely stored back in the box when not in use, which (along with the already rounded corners) would help to account for the large number of high grade cards now.

T and E cards had no built-in storage unit, and were more prone to be stored loosely, accounting for more wear.

I have no doubts regarding the 1913 production date on these.

[glynparson]

You can't discount their age because you can find many nice examples. Especially when their is a 1913 date in the game informaToon. That is just silly reasoning. Especially when they are no easier than other period pieces. I believe the box helped protect the cards along with their overall sturdiness and round corners same with national game or Tom barkers or pologrounds or Lawson's all are simillar cards and very easy to find in high grade for a period issue. It's not too difficult to figure out why it's easy to find a high grade example.

[Brian Van Horn]

Originally Posted by glynparson

You can't discount their age because you can find many nice examples. Especially when their is a 1913 date in the game informaToon. That is just silly reasoning. Especially when they are no easier than other period pieces. I believe the box helped protect the cards along with their overall sturdiness and round corners same with national game or Tom barkers or pologrounds or Lawson's all are simillar cards and very easy to find in high grade for a period issue. It's not too difficult to figure out why it's easy to find a high grade example.

Glyn,

I appreciate it, but even with the box, my point is that the cards kind of defy a hobby "gravitational" rule. Yes, the cards are rounded, but cards were produced with children in mind. This was a game. Kids would gravitate toward the cards. What cards made for children in a game survive in such good shape for 102 years? I also don't buy the graphics or the type of paper on the back dating back to 1913.

[Paul S]

Originally Posted by Brian Van Horn

Glyn,

I appreciate it, but even with the box, my point is that the cards kind of defy a hobby "gravitational" rule. Yes, the cards are rounded, but cards were produced with children in mind. This was a game. Kids would gravitate toward the cards. What cards made for children in a game survive in such good shape for 102 years? I also don't buy the graphics or the type of paper on the back dating back to 1913.

And don't forget - as playing cards they were meant to be shuffled Defies all reasoning.

[bgar3]

I have no doubt of the 1913 date. In the 70's and 80's these were collected as decks of cards with box etc as previousy shown. I did not know anyone who would have considered breaking up a complete deck to sell an indivual card and certainly no one cared about grades. Collectors did want as complete a set as possible. I know playing cards are cards, but they were not viewed as "cards" like t206's etc until relatively recently.