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| Baseball Player Image: pexels.com |
A recent Forbes article brought focus to Old Judge (OJ) cigarette tobacco cards, which were produced from 1887 to 1890 and represent some of the oldest baseball cards in existence. With approximately 4,500 OJ cards and variations, some are one-of-a-kind artifacts.
Most OJ cards are available for a few hundred dollars each in decent condition, with Hall of Famers Cap Anson, Buck Ewing, and Mike “King” Kelly commanding mid-grade prices of several thousand dollars. Common player cards can also be of high value as long as they are rare.
One unique aspect of OJs is that the sharpness of fade-susceptible images is weighted above overall condition. For example, a card in fair condition with a distinct image is far preferable to a card in good condition with a faded image.
