Old Judge Subset Rankings

I am curious How the Old Judge subset rank by difficulty. I know the spotted ties are tough (wherer did this subset ever get it's name?) , I am not sure what all the subsets are but am really curious where the Browns Champions fall in the difficulty.

Lee

Not sure of the rankings except the PCL, that is easily the toughest subset. Other subsets include:

Spotted Ties
Browns Champs
Minis
Unumbered series
Long numbered series
Western Association
Players Association
Brooklyn outdoor photos
Umpires
Mascots
Teams (I think there is only one Mansfield known and would also cover the Spotted Ties and Browns Champs)

The spotted ties are called that because int heir photo, they are wearing ties with spots on them.

Jay

Jay is correct, the PCL Old Judges are by far the toughest. There was one (or two?) on ebay a few years ago that approached a six figure sale price! Those were very cool.

My knowledge of the set pales in comparison to the hardcore OJ collectors, so hopefully one of them will chime in. However, from Jay's list, the "minis" appear to be among the most difficult.

Here's a scan of a N172 "mini" from Dave Levin's website:

There are a couple of uncatalogued teams. I imagine they will be revealed in the soon to be published Old Judge book. I would rate Brooklyn outdoor poses as the easiest on your list.

The reason I ask about the spotted tie was because of this card:



Now that I look i can see it was a tie, but the thing is so dirty I didn't recognize it right away. Ugliest 40 I ever saw.

Lee

Lee,

That is one of the ugliest SGC40 OJs I've seen. It looks like a good candidate for the AUTH label. Part of the bottom has been hacked off. Whether it was a factory miscut or not doesn't matter because they've typically not provided numerical grades to cards that look trimmed or have the Goodwin information hacked off the bottom.

Cal League cards are the most costly of the OJs. I've been told there really aren't subsets to OJs but I think you can break these down to different "sub sets".

I'd put Mini's near the top of the list for being tough. I'd venture to guess that most people that collect OJs don't have a mini.

Spotted/Dotted ties are tough but at least you see them on ebay every so often.

Browns Champs and Outdoor poses aren't that tough. The outdoor poses are not limited to having just Brooklyn (as the team) listed on the cards.

Only two mascots that I know of: Willie Hahm, also has a card with Williamson and Willie Breslin, also shown with Buck Ewing. The Oregon Find (I think) had the Hahm card. It was a total beater but I don't think the price paid reflected the poor grade.

I guess you could break it down to number and un-numbered series, but I wouldn't call those subsets because there are soooo many of each of those cards.

Some people collect teams and are trying to get one of every team with the exception of the Cal League cards. There are a few teams that are represented by 4 or less players and a few teams only represented by one player. The following is a list of the less represented teams and the number of players that represent that team:

Burlington 1
Mansfield 1
New Haven 1
Rochester 1
Hamilton 2
London 2
Hartford 3
Jersey City 3
Newark 3
Syracuse 3
Toledo 3
Toronto 3
Worcester 4

Here's a "sub set" that hasn't been mentioned: PL (Players League) and NL (National League). The PLs are the tougher of the two. Most of the PLs and NLs have the PL or NL designation. There are however cards that depict players on teams where the NL or PL isn't shown but the team/player designation can only indicate that it is a PL or NL card. For example, the Comiskey, Chicago card doesn't say PL on it but Comiskey only played for the PL Chicago team. I consider it a PL card and I think most others also do.

There's also the two player cards. There are two varieties of the two player cards: Both players name listed and only one player name is listed. I can think of two cards that show two players where only one is listed and the other unlisted player is a HOFer.

There's probably more... I'm just a little brain dead right now...

OJsOJs wrote:
The outdoor poses are not limited to having just Brooklyn (as the team) listed on the cards.

It was my understanding that all of the outdoor poses were originally Brooklyn players because Joseph Hall only took the Brooklyn players photos outdoors, but not any other team. All of the cards found with the outdoor poses and team not listed as Brooklyn would be team changes only, but the pose was always first used as a Brooklyn player card. Also, I believe, all mini's are Brooklyn only. Please let me know if I am wrong here.

Thanks,

AndyH

OJsOJs wrote:Here's a "sub set" that hasn't been mentioned: PL (Players League) and NL (National League).

Brain fart on my part. I typed Players Association when I meant Players League.

Jay

Andy,

That is correct about the Joseph Hall connection. Sorry I didn't go into more details. There are a few other teams besides Brooklyn listed for the outdoor poses but they all originated from Brooklyn players. I car recall KC and Rochester off hand, there are probably more.

One more "sub set" series is the SCRIPT series. These are not the cards with the script writing at the bottom of the cards, these are the cards where the players name is written in script in the photo portion of the card. There's lots of information regarding this in Lew's book.

Here are some EX-Brooklyn Outdoor players...


The Swartwood is with Hamilton, but it is tough to read.
-Rhett

As crazy as the early National League was, I really like OJ cards of players whose careers predate that league. Players who were successful in The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. Whew, there is a group with a history!

But it is not an "official" subset. Like many of the really good ones.