Question: While searching the internet for information on old baseball cards I found your site. I am hoping you can help me. I recently was given a scrapbook of my grandmothers and she had several old judge and mayo cut plug cards.Is there somewhere to find out average prices for these cards? I also have tobacco cards of women-I think they are actresses maybe? If I find prices where is the best place to sell them. Thank you in advance for any information.
Answer: Wow! Thats sounds like a great little collection you have there. Old Judge and Mayo Cut Plug cards are highly collectible within the baseball card industry. The Old Judge cards are some of the first baseball cards ever made back in the 1880’s. Can you read any of the names on the cards? The all would be highly collectible but some Hall of Famers would be worth even more. The same goes for the Mayo Cut Plug cards. Please do not try to remove the cards from the scrapbook if they are glued in. That would just damage them more. The best place for finding prices would be eBay if you know who any of the players are. I’m not too sure about the actress cards. I would need to see a picture or more information about them. Are the actress cards in color or black and white? Hope to hear back from you soon. Thanks.
Filed under: Q & A | Tagged: answer, cards, cut, judge, mayo, old, plug, question, scrapbook, sports, t206, vintage |
Sports Card Info 
Good advice on not removing them from the scrapbook. They would just get more damaged that way.
In my experience, 19th century cards are hard to find on eBay, a good resource for finding an average price of a specific card is in a Sport Collectors Digest Standard Catalog. My copy lists VG as the lowest grade so the actual value would be a fraction of that since these are pasted to a scrapbook, but it’s a decent starting point.
As for the actress cards, there are dozens of sets featuring actresses from the 19th century, a scan or detailed description would be the only way to identify the,
I have a book called “American Tobacco Cards” by Forbes and Mitchell that has detailed information on each nineteenth century set and several early tobacco issues. It’s out of print, but can usually be found on eBay. If I had a scan, I could probably identify it pretty quickly.
The best online resource for information on these old sets is the vintage non-sports card chat board.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/526604/
they have tons of obscure info on there and the gallery is fantastic.
http://www1.coe.neu.edu/~dan/z-ns-start/showtime.html
do you want to sell these cards email jarebmackin@yahoo.com
Sorry, I’m not the one selling them.
I recently found some old hockey scrapbooks that have vintage cards in them. Bobby Hull’s rookie card, Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard, etc. Problem is that some are glued on the paper from these books. Some are loose but have glue on the back. Any ideas on how to get the glue off the back and still be able to read the stats??