W600 Sporting Life Cabinets Set and Checklist

Posted on October 6, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	W600 Sporting Life Cabinets
Year	1902-11
Size	5″ x 7 1/2″
Images	Various
Type	W-Card/Cabinet
Number in Set	600+

W600 Sporting Life Cabinets Overview

For some reason, the W600 Sporting Life Cabinets set is classified as a W-card. At nearly 5″ x 8″ in size and associated with Sporting Life Newspaper, these could perhaps be better classified elsewhere.

Black and white pictures (some have color tints over the pictures) are on the front and backs include advertiser stamps. The pictures are affixed to a cardboard backing. The picture includes the player’s photo, ‘Sporting Life’, and the player’s name, position, and team in the border area at the bottom.

The cardboard backing serves as a de facto frame of sorts. The bottom had a decorative design and read:

Sporting Life – Philadelphia
“The paper that made base ball popular”

Some of the backs of these also give a little more insight. Some backs, for example, contain a stamp mentioning that duplicates can be obtained from Sporting Life for ten cents each. The stamp also mentioned that a full list of photos of the players could be found in the current issue of Sporting Life.

Many rookie issues are found in here, including that of Ty Cobb. The question of if this is actually a baseball card or not can be asked but this is one of the earliest collectibles that Cobb has.

The massive issue has more than 600 photos that were produced over a series of years.