Lelands Offers Extraordinary CDV Find Showing Baseball’s Beginnings

[h2oya311]

Brian -

Awesome cab and congrats again on the pick-up! I think the earliest your new cab could have been produced is 1883, given how much hair he had in images with Buffalo through at least the 1882 season. The hair style (shaved head?) look is very similar to the style he wore during his time with Detroit. So I’d date this cabinet to between 1883 to early 1886 as I still think there’s a chance he had this taken as he transitioned from Buffalo to Detroit. I don’t know what his hair looked like in that three year period (1883-1885), but if images surface, they could help with getting a more precise date of your cab.

Here’s what he looked like in 1880:



Given that this NY Clipper Woodcut was issued on newspaper stock, I would say you have a very strong argument that you own the earliest (known) individual ”card” of Brouthers! Pretty awesome!