1889 Spalding Guide on Ebay

[barrysloate]

I just checked my reprint set and 1889 appears to be in fact the first one with photos. They were sparse in those early years however.

1889 also appears to be the first with a glossy color cover. The guide used lower quality paper and black and white illustrations for its covers through 1888.

[bmarlowe1]

Dan and Barry,

The 1895 Spalding Guide was the first with a substantial number of team photos (for the 1894 teams), which thereafter continued on a regular basis.

The 1894 guide had none, the 1889 guide had only New York NL, Chicago NL and an All-Americans team shot (from the world tour I think), and a lot of head shots of execs.

[slidekellyslide]

I know it's blasphemy to say this, but I wish I'd purchased those cutouts of the Lincoln teams from those guides when they first appeared on ebay.

[base_ball]

By the way, in case anyone has forgotten, the 1889, 1894, and 1895 guides are among the Library of Congress's online collection:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collecti...ng/titleS.html