Some more Old Judge Q's

[paul]

I have finally finished going through the entire Old Judge book, and I have a few questions that I hope the authors or others can answer.

1. Some of the cards shown are Cabinets or Gypsy Queens. For these cards, is there no known N172, or were the authors just unable to locate one?

2. I saw one or two 1890 Old Judges in the book that had photo quality as nice as any other Old Judge. I thought all of the 1890s were second generation cards, so how did a few of them end up looking so nice? And if they can look nice, why do most of them look so crappy?

3. Some of the 1887-89 cards have real poor photo quality, similar to most 1890s. Is this generally the result of fading over time? Or were these particular examples just issued with a poorly developed photo?

4. If an 1890 card does not list the league, what is the definitive way to determine that it is an 1890 card?

Thanks.

Paul