New 1914 Babe Ruth Card Discovered?

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Posted By: Robert Lifson

Hi Corey! The 19th and early 20th century photos that you are referring to (and which I agree were in many cases produced for distribution to players) have photographer's studio advertising only, for the studio producing the photographs. The Baltimore News team card has both the photographer's information and, separately, (and very prominently) also has the Compliments of The Baltimore News lettering. I can't think of any instance off-hand where a company producing a set of cards of players to advertise their product or service made a completely separate team card (or additional versions of individual player cards) that had advertising for the product or service but were produced exclusively for distribution only to the players. Someday (a year from now or 100 years from now) a second team card example will turn up, but even that discovery won't allow us to discount the possibility with 100% certainty that the card was produced only for players as you are suggesting is possible. Anything is possible but I think the likelihood of this is remote. There is no way for me know with certainty. Sometimes cards are inexplicably rare or unique. I believe the 1917 Chicago White Sox team set was sold to the public (it even has a package design box that was made for it), yet only one set is known. How can this be? We can speculate that the set was never distributed to the public or that the cards were distributed only to players, and either explanation might actually be the case, but this speculation would have absolutely no foundation in fact. The fact that the team card has been found with cards that were definitely issued to the public suggests it was distributed to the public, but is not conclusive. In the mid 1990s REA handled Oriole Neal Ball's estate, and he saved everything, but there was no 1914 Baltimore News team card. This suggests that players did not receive team cards, but is also not conclusive. Anything is possible.