Issued in 1887 by D. Buchner & Co. and once found with Buchner Gold Coin chewing tobacco, the colorful N284 set feature what many call generic images. The images of players are not created from actual images of the player represented and are used for multiple players. But the images give a glimpse of baseball in the 1880s and offer an affordable option to buy superstars of the 19th century.

There are many different poses found and three different back variations. Another variation is the advertising overprint.

What appears to be a case of taking uncut sheets of regular issued cards and printing an advertising message on the fronts of the cards, these advertising overprint cards have regular backs and are on the same stock as the cut issued cards. The cards with the ad printing appear to have been hand cut, adding to the evidence of a ad sheet being cut down.

As you can see in the image above, a small sampling of cards partially spell out what appears to be the word “TOBACCO.” On another card, a smaller sized type can be seen reading “& Co.” presuming this is possibly part of “D. Buchner & Co.”

Examining the overprinting closer, you can see the impression of the printing press into the sheet. The letters are pressed into the original card image, leading us to believe the ads were in fact printed separately and after the card fronts and backs were already printed.

I tried to show the “R” in particular using a light source to reflect the difference in the surface from the card surface and the letter. You can see a shelf in the top of the “R.”

What the full message reads is a mystery to me. While I have seen a handful of these at once, I have not seen enough of these cards to assemble the full text of the advertising.

Because of the cards being hand cut, they cannot have a numerical grade assigned to them. They are holdered as “Authentic” only.

Signed copies now available!