M is for Mayo Cut Plug

October 30th, 2009  |  Published in ABCs of Vintage Football Cards, Sites I Like

The first set of football cards printed was the 1894 Mayo Cut Plug tobacco card series. The 35-card set, which was distributed in tins of chewing tobacco, includes only college players from Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. There is a nice article about the Mayo cards on The Harvard-Yale Football Gallery, a site dedicated to the Harvard-Yale rivalry. According to the article, one of the Princeton players in the set, “Poe,” was a direct descendant of Edgar Allen Poe. Another card in the set pictures an unnamed Yale player, initially listed as “Anonymous,” but later identified as John Dunlop. The Dunlop card is the rarest card in the set.

I don’t yet own any Mayo cards (the picture here is from a Bill Hickok article on Wikipedia), so I can’t provide any personal observations about them. SGC’s web site has the full list of 1984 Mayo cards, and the Harvard-Yale site has pictures of the cards of Harvard and Yale players. There are usually a few listed on eBay as well. (For $7500 you can get a PSA 8!)

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