Old Judge with Rare Back Advertisement Surfaces

I collect all sorts of things but oddities are among my favorites. I love stuff that you don’t see everyday and found one of those sorts of items in Love of the Game’s recent auction.

Truth be told — all of their auctions always have some rare stuff in it. But you can’t chase everything. This card, though, was something I really wanted.

I like Old Judge cards, but don’t have a ton of them. But in the last auction, there was one with a stamped advertisement on the back.

LOTG had stated in the description they’d never seen another. And that makes two of us, though my experience with Old Judge’s is far from significant. But I had never seen one and couldn’t even find one Googling, which I expected I could.

A real positive, too, is the clarity of the image. The player, Jack Clements, is pictured with a bat and it’s thankfully an Old Judge with a very strong image that has not faded over time.

I wasn’t initially real optimistic about winning it. While not nearly as large of a base that collects sets like T205 or T206, Old Judge cards have their following of collectors chasing them. But while there was some competition on this card, I was glad that it didn’t seem to draw crazy attention.

The Player – Jack Clements

The player isn’t a star. Pictured with the Phillies here is Jack Clements, who played almost his entire career with the club, in addition to brief stops in St. Louis, Cleveland, and Boston.

But while Clements wasn’t a bonafide superstar, he was a very good player — primarily a catcher. He batted over .300 in six different seasons (even though he was largely a part-time player in some of those). He retired in 1900 with Boston, hitting .310 in limited action and was a career .287 hitter. In 1894-96, he was a real star hitter, batting .351, .394, and .359 in successive seasons.

I don’t know how many other cards Clements has outside of a few Old Judge cards where he is known to appear with several poses. Despite his long career, this is one of the few playing day cards of Clements, whose career came at a time when many baseball card sets were not printed.

The Advertisement

Old Judge cards, if you know them, have blank backs. Many were at one time attached to scrap book pages and, as a result, you’ll find some with damaged backs with paper loss from being removed from the pages. But unlike trade cards from the same era, these were not meant as advertisements for other companies. Other companies did not routinely affix their own advertisement to the backs as was common with trade cards. These cards were issued with Goodwin’s Old Judge cigarette packages and then collected.

And that’s why this one is so unique. The stamp is an interesting one. And, as a cigarette card, it’s even better that the advertisement is for a cigar store. It proves that at least one company used them for their own advertising purposes instead.

The advertisement promotes the J.L. Templeton Opera House Cigar Store in Council Bluffs, Iowa. And if you’re wondering about that seemingly strange combination, know that such arrangements were quite common. Opera Houses or theaters were often paired with things like bars or sold tobacco and cigars.

I researched this one in particular, though. That can be a little hit or miss but it turns out that, while I could not find a mention of the specific store, I did find some good information on the owner, J.L. Templeton in Council Bluffs. And part of the reason I was able to find any information on him at all, perhaps, was because Templeton was a somewhat well-known figure in Iowa.

This article mentions that Templeton was actually the Fire Department Chief for Pottawattamie County (where Council Bluffs, Iowa is located) in 1886 and 1887, when the Old Judge cards were first being printed. In 1890, he was elected as the County Marshall. And a separate accounting notes Templeton was also a real estate dealer at some point.

Do I think it’s the only one with a stamped advertisement? Not really. There are lots of Old Judge cards out there for one thing. For another, as I’ve said, I am hardly an expert on the set. And I’m not frequently looking to buy them. I have little doubt that there are others, even if they are greatly limited in number.

That said, it’s quite rare, obviously, and a really nice find.