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Understanding Goodwin & Company
8 April 2007Goodwin and Company’s massive yet, sometimes confusing N172 set of baseball cards was the first widely distributed set devoted to baseball players only. Consisting of six series of printings over four years, I’ll try to explain the set here.
The first three printings contain the caption "Old Judge Cigarettes" somewhere at the top portion of the card. Series one consists of cards 01 through 0130, and entail mostly baseball and boxing cards. The card number can be found at the top right hand corner of the card.
Series two entails 572 multiple posing player cards. Numbers 01 - 031 are boxers; 032 - 0575 are baseball players. The baseball player cards represent players from all the National League teams and one American Association team - Brooklyn (probably because the photographer’s business was located in that city).
The third series, sometimes referred to as the script series, entails cards 032 - 0262 and 0332 through 0360. This series contains several changes from the previous two series. First, the card number was moved to the caption. Next, the block lettering found on the first two series had changed to a script font.
Series four, five and six of Goodwin & Company’s cards (1888-1889) show N172 Old Judge, N173 Old Judge, and Dog’s Head advertisements. Each card contains the player’s last name only. Referred to as the long-numbered series, there are numerous errors in the names of some of these cards. The Dog’s Head cards are actually cabinets measuring the usual cabinet size (4-1/2" by 6-1/2").
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