The 1871 season was monumental for the development of professional baseball as the first fully professional team, the 1871 Boston Red Stockings, popularised the sport and helped legitimise it as a business venture. While their on-field accomplishments grabbing national attention, one item from that inaugural season that stands as one of the rarest and most prized relics in sports card and memorabilia history is the 1871 Boston Red Stockings baseball cards.
The Red Stockings, led by player-manager Harry Wright, became the first openly professional team, offering players salaries instead of just reimbursement of travel expenses that was common at the time for top amateur teams. That 1871 Boston nine dominated opponents, finishing the year with a stunning 57–1 record. In doing so they captured imaginations and proved the viability of pro ball. Their accomplishments may be even more remarkable considering they were promoting the sport without modern promotional tools and were truly entreprenurial pioneers.
It was during this landmark first year that a set of linen-textured cards featuring the members of the 1871 Boston team was produced bearing their likenesses, presumably for promotional purposes. Each card stands approximately 2 1/2 inches by 4 inches in size and features a profile of the player along with selected stats and biographical information. The identity of the exact lithographer who produced these cards remains unknown to this day, but they represent what most experts agree is the first set of baseball cards ever created.
While the cards were seemingly distributed freely or given away during the 1871 season, the extreme rarity of any known to exist today suggests only a small handful were printed. For over 100 years, it was believed only one pristine example survived at all in the possession of the Hall of Fame. In recent decades a few other specimens have emerged onto the collecting market through old family collections and estate auctions, though most are in rough shape. Regardless of condition, any 1871 Boston card that appears instantly captivates the sports collecting community given their status as the preeminent holy grail relic.
The 1871 Boston Red Stockings baseball cards featured all nine members of the team, including stars such as Wright, second baseman Ross Barnes, and pitcher Albert Spalding. Each player’s card contained their name, position, batting average, number of games played in 1871, and a short biography noting career highlights to date. On the reverse is some small printed information about the Red Stockings’ dominance that season along with advertisements for local businesses, providing historians insight into period commercial interests.
While crude by modern standards with their primitive production values, the artistic rendering and inclusion of key stats on each card helped establish conventions that would be further developed in subsequent decades as baseball card sets became a mainstream business. Many experts argue they indeed laid the foundations for the modern baseball card industry, helping play a role in elevating statistics as important details to track player performance. They also served partly as an early form of baseball memorabilia sold or given away at games.
The extreme rarity of any 1871 Boston Red Stockings cards that still exist can be attributed to a few key factors. Chiefly, they were never intended to be widely collected or saved long-term at the time since baseball memorabilia markets didn’t really emerge for many decades. Any distributed were likely treated as disposable promo items by most initial recipients. The crude production quality and non-glossy linen paper stock used for the first baseball cards ever made them highly susceptible to damage or destruction over 150 years compared to modern slick printed equivalents. Natural aging and exposure has undoubtedly left almost no survivors from that initial very small printed run.
Even more so than other collectibles which accumulate or enter the marketplace gradually, any 1871 Red Stockings card that does surface is a monumental find that captivates the sport and media world. The two highest graded examples that have changed hands illustrate just how prized these pieces of history are. In 2016, the “finest known” 1871 Boston Bijou Gershman Al Spalding card graded NM-MT 8 by PSA sold for an astounding $657,250, marking a new world record price for a single sports card. Then in 2021, another PSA NM-MT 8 example of the Orator Shellendorf card achieved $399,360 to rank as one of the all-time priciest low-numered baseball cards.
Beyond their iconic status as the first baseball cards and representation of the founding of professionalism in the sport, the 1871 Boston Red Stockings set also carries significance in the historical record. They provide visual confirmation of the players and statistical details from that breakthrough season printed before memories would potentially fade. Their survival into the modern museum archives and protected private collections ensures far more than just sports fans but researchers have access to these unique primary source artifacts chronicling the early formation of America’s national pastime. While incredibly rare, every 1871 card rediscovered still has the ability to generate excitement around the rich history of baseball’s origins and evolution.
