Revisiting the 1910 PC805 Novelty Cutlery Postcard set.

[Baseball Rarities]

With the inclusion of some great 1910 PC805 Novelty Cutlery postcards in the REA and Heritage auctions, I have had a number of collectors contact me regarding the dating on this set and specifically the Johnson and Speaker postcards.

To cut to the chase, I think that the PC805 Novelty Cutlery Postcards were issued in 1910.

Both SGC and PSA have always labeled these cards as being from 1907-09, which is wrong. PSA has recently changed their database to reflect 1910. Curiously, they both label the PC796 Sepia postcards as being from 1910, which is correct. The original Beckett Baseball Memorabilia Price Guide from 1982 had both of these issues listed in it and correctly dated them to 1910.

Somewhere down the road SCD added the PC805 Novelty Cutlery set to their publication and erroneously dated it 1907-10, which is what I assume both SGC and PSA used for their data. How they came up with 1907-10 when they correctly dated the PC796 set as 1910 is beyond me. The two sets have the exact same subjects and use the exact same images.

If 1907 was the correct date, then this set would contain the rookie postcards of Hal Chase, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and Tris Speaker. As we know, rookie cards have become a big deal in our hobby and collectors are willing to pay a large premium for these issues.

If anyone has any interest in how these postcards are dated to 1910, here is a thread that I started about 10 years ago on the dating:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...159#post840159