COMC Challenge: Sweet Caporal Doesn't Always Mean Baseball Cards

We’d like to begin by congratulating the winner of COMC Challenge #2, Stephen Schauer of Cincinnati, OH who correctly completed the three-card 1997 Topps retail baseball set by naming Chipper Jones as card #1 (Ken Griffey Jr. and Cal Ripken complete the set). We did receive a whole bunch of entries for our last contest and I want to thank you for participating.

COMC Challenge #3 may prove more difficult! It involves a 19th century non-sports set.

Occasionally a major step is made in our hobby by providing a really complete checklist. Through various on-line sources, there are now complete T-206 checklists broken down by back to show just how many different cards were part of the set we affectionately call “The Monster”. In addition, and in retrospect, much credit must be given to Bob Lemke when he was editing the Standard Catalog for printing the complete checklist with all pose variations for the 1887-90 Old Judge series. Both of these ventures are major additions to the overall hobby knowledge.

What we are asking for today has previously existed in the hobby, but no one that I could find on an on-line search had saved the information and kept it in a way where future generations could benefit as well.

COMC deals in all types of cards and we’re going way back in time to help them chronicle one of the great 19^th century non-sports issues: the 1880’s N245 Sweet Caporal Actress set. It’s out of the norm for what we normally write about but please note these cards are very popular and do sell rather easily.

Your challenge is to either 1) find a way to resurrect what once existed as a web page for this set with complete images or 2) to find and have a hobby friend or contact come through with a complete checklist of this set.

Either way, you will be doing the hobby a great favor and will also help increase interest in 19^th century sets. Having complete checklists and information sometimes brings out more cards if you’re looking to buy and will help you to sell cards from the set if a checklist is known.

Are you up for the Challenge? Drop me a note ([email protected]). We’ll draw a winner early next week and that person will earn 1,300 COMC History Points.

COMC.com is pioneering safe and easy online consignment of your sports cards. You send them in, COMC lists them and you price them. You can also buy from a massive inventory of submitted cards. To get started, visit COMC.com.