Princeton - Yale 1890 Football Stock (Trade) Cards

These “series” type trade cards are comic in nature, quite the norm for the period. Four cards are specific to identified Yale and Princeton football players of 1890. These are a wonderful and scarce lithographic card set. Excuse my enthusiasm, but, they’re just fantastic.

(One can draw a comparison of these cards in age and style to the 1880 H804-8 “Sporting Life Publishing Company” set, depicting comical baseball scenes).

These cards picture caricatures of Edgar Poe of Princeton (his nickname during the period was Peter), John “Josh” Hartwell of Yale, Thomas Lee “Bum” McClung of Yale, and Sheppard Homans of Princeton. Two of the cards are not specific to players. 

McClung played for Yale 1889, 90, 91 was an All-American in 1890 and 91 and captained the team in 1891.

John Hartwell played for Yale in 1889, 90, 91 and was All-American in 1891. He coached Yale in 1895.

Sheppard Homans played for Princeton 1889, 90, 91 and was All-American in 1890 and 91.

Edgar Allan Poe played for Princeton in 1888, 89, 90 and was captain in 1889 and 90.

Trade cards with lithographed football images are rare and would have been  issued originally as "stock cards" (free of advertising), and as a set, in this case as a set of six. These cards were supplied with blank areas and/or blank backs to have businesses have their desired advertising added by local printers, who could be found in any metropolitan area. Cards were handed out by salesman or hawkers or given out free at the business location. These cards were often collected during the period they were distributed (accounting for such cards, when they do show up, doing so as a complete sets) and this was one way businesses lured customers into their stores.