Search
1888 N338-1 S. F. Hess California League - McDonald
- Sold For: $5,400
- Year: 1888
- Auction: 2016 Spring
- Lot #: 88
- Auction Category: Pre-1900 Baseball Cards (1830-1899)
Presented is an extremely attractive example of McDonald from the N338-1 S. F. Hess California League series. This is the only example of McDonald graded by PSA and SGC to date! This is an incredible rarity! Among the short list of virtually impossible to obtain sample cards, the sepia N338-1 S. F. Hess California League cards have always been at or close to the top. The offered card exhibits superb photo quality, with extraordinary detail. The card presents as VG-EX to EX from the front, but has been downgraded to POOR 10 by SGC due to paper loss and glue residue from album removal on the blank reverse. When Lew Lipset's The Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards Volume 1 - 19th Century Cards was published in 1983, he noted that S. F. Hess California League cards "must rate with Four Base Hits as the rarest of the 19th century photographic cards." At that time only sixteen cards in the set were known to exist, including eleven different in the Burdick Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Four new additions to the set have been discovered since. This is a very rare opportunity to acquire an extraordinary and almost impossible to find example of one of nineteenth-century baseball-card collecting's most elusive and prized sample cards. From the Dan Gantt Collection. Reserve $2,000. Estimate (open).
