1887-1888 Scrapps Die Cuts

Issued directly after the 1887 season, this 18 card set features 9 players each from the American Association's St. Louis Browns (the modern day Cardinals) and the National League's Detroit Wolverines (a team that disbanded in 1888). These two teams met in the World Series in 1887.

The Wolverines beat the Browns 10 games to 5. The Wolverines won the series on October 21st, but since the games were already sold, the teams played the remaining four games.

St. Louis Browns
1 Doc Bushong
2 Bob Caruthers
3 Charles Comiskey
4 Dave Foutz
5 Bill Gleason
6 Arlie Latham
7 Tip O'Neill
8 Yank Robinson
9 Curt Welch

Detroit Wolverines
10 C. W. Bennett
11 Dan Brouthers
12 Fred Dunlap
13 Charlie Getzen sic (should be Getzien)
14 Ned Hanlon
15 Hardie Richardson
16 Jack Rowe
17 Sam Thompson
18 Deacon White

While there are Hall of Fame players in the set (Dan Brouthers, Sam Thompson and Ned Hanlon), the most valuable and most sought out is the Charles Comiskey. 19th century cards are usually riddled with errors and this set is no exception. Charlie Getzien's name is misspelled.

These die cut cards were popular in its day and were prime candidates to be glued into albums. It's extremely rare to run across examples of these cards today that haven't spent some time glued into an album.

What have we learned from these cards? Despite what revisionists would have you believe the World Series and die-cut cards are not inventions of the twentieth century. They've both been here all along.

1888 A&G Rifle Shooters

Back when tobacco cards were in their infancy, Allen & Ginter was producing everything from birds to baseball players to masters of different crafts onto its cards. It made the set interesting to collect and not just another throwaway item, which is what most people did with their cards.

One of the odder sets, by today's standards, would be the Rifle Shooters series from 1888. Out of the four cards listed on this card's back, the oddest one would be Miss Annie Oakley. If a card was produced of a modern day woman surrounded by guns, there would be an outcry from politically correct people calling for banishment.

Thankfully, the nineteenth century was a different time, in that respect. Thanks to the care that the Allen & Ginter company put into their "throwaway" product, there is an interesting and varied set left to collect today.

Some of these cards can be had for a steal. Others, you will pay an arm and a leg for. In this regard, eBay is your new best friend. My only collecting interest in nineteenth century cards would be baseball players from the Sioux City Cornhuskers of the Western League, from 1894, and the St. Paul Apostles (also known as the Saints), from 1895 - 1899. I haven't found any examples of cards from these teams, but I haven't exhaustively searched for them either.

For those of you complaining about the addition of other subjects than baseball players in the revival of Allen & Ginter cards from Topps, these oddball subjects were there from the beginning. Why change something that has worked since the nineteenth century?