1888 G&B Gum Set and Checklist (E223)

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	E223 G&B Gum
Year	1888
Size	1″ x 2 1/8″
Images	Sepia
Type	Candy/Caramel
Number in Set	84

E223 G&B Gum Overview

While most E cards didn’t surface until later, the 1888 E223 G&B Gum set was one of the earliest known baseball card issues. In fact, it is believed to be the first gum-related card set.

The G&B stood for Green and Blackwell Company.

Most candy and gum cards did not arrive until the 20th Century after the emergency of tobacco cards. However, this is one of the few from the 1800s.

The cards heavily resembled what tobacco cards looked like at the time with a sepia image of a player on the front along with his name and team. Backs of the cards were blank. Similar to the tobacco issues from the same time period such as the N172 Old Judge set, these cards are prone to fading and premiums exist for pictures that remain clear and sharp.

The cards featured both real photographs and drawings of players. As Love of the Game Auctions says, these are also similar to the N403 Yum Yum Tobacco cards produced that same year.

The set also includes one of the early few (if not ‘only’) known cards featuring Hall of Famer A.G. Spalding. Spalding would go on to become one of the founders of Spalding Sporting Goods. Spalding’s name is misspelled on the card as ‘Spaulding.’

The cards were likely packaged with G&B’s gum products as ‘Chewing Gum’ is printed on the bottom of some of the cards along with the G&B name.

E223 G&B Gum Checklist

A fully-confirmed G&B Gum checklist is not known. However, here are the cards known to have been graded by PSA and SGC according to their pop reports. Cards marked with an * are not in the pop reports but listed in other checklists.

A total of 69 different players are known and the Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards reports 15 variations. That would give us a known total of 84 cards.