Pre-1900 Women's baseball cards

[Archive]

Posted By: Joann

I don't know a whole lot about women bb cards. I think the flurry happened concurrent with the N172 OJ's (or approximately so) and Virginia Brights, Dixis, Sub Rosa all put out cards similar in style to the OJ's. There were also cabinets associated with many of these. I'm not sure if there is a checklist anywhere, but since most of the sets showed players by position (thinking there were no female players themselves to include) I'm not sure how much a checklist is needed.

I thought about accumulating some of these cards, but awhile back changed my mind to go for cards with actual female players, not posed models. With that, I'm limited to cabinets, postcards and photos and so far have only picked up a handful. But it's kind of fun to keep an eye out for them and finally find one that fits my collecting profile for these - real female players, pre-1915 or so.

In the postcard arena, it's still mostly Bloomer Girls - Star Bloomers, Boston Bloomers and Western Bloomers. Western Bloomer Girls were founded by Maud Nelson, one of the players for either the Boston or Star Bloomer. I think WB's were founded around 1911 (and were actually a whole league) and the Boston and Star Bloomer teams from maybe just pre-1900 up to the founding of the Western Bloomers.

A few of the items (okay okay, ALL of the items) I've gotten since I started looking for these types.

This one shows that, even in the 19th Century, the advertising mantra was "sex sells"! lol. Check out Henry's pictures above, and compare to what real women players were actually wearing at that time (approx 1890). Haha. Kind of funny how "risque" those model uniforms in Henry's cards were for the time. Probably the period equivalent of today's thong bikini shot or something. (This is absolutely one of my top cards - actual size approx 4x6)







PC's of a Star and a Western Bloomer team. I swear these all look like the same women.




A few other misc items:




Oh - and Henry, here is the back of the Star Bloomer PC