1980 Nostalgic Enterprises 1903 NY Highlanders

INTRODUCTION TO THE SET

First off, welcome back.

To start back into the 1980s Oddball world, let's start with an oddball that seems to be relatively known yet little is written about it.

According to the Standard Catalog, Nostalgic Enterprises was a pseudonym for a collector issuing the cards in 1980. It is unclear whether this collector had plans to expand his/her brand into additional sets, or if they just had a hankering to have cards of the first team to represent New York in the American League.

The team itself was nothing special -- finishing in fourth place with a 72-62 record. According to Wikipedia, the team started off being called the Invaders due to invading the Giants' territory in Manhattan. The Highlanders played their games a few blocks north and west of Coogan's Hollow [where the Giants played at the time] and at one of the highest points of Manhattan Island called The Hilltop. The name Highlanders referred both to the team's location and to its team President Joseph Gordon. Around the turn of the 20th Century, one of the world's most famous infantry units was a British unit known as the Gordon Highlanders.

The back of the card notes that Nostalgic Enterprises is located in Wayland, Massachusetts, which is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, of just over thirteen thousand people in 2010 located about thirty to forty minutes outside of downtown Boston. I searched the Massachusetts Secretary of State's Corporations Database just in case this was either an existing company or that some other record would show up, but nothing turned up.

EXEMPLARS

DETAILS

Each of the seventeen cards in this set are the standard size of 2.5" x 3.5". From the other exemplars that I have seen online, it appears that the photos were all drawn from this team photo of the members of the 1903 New York "Americans":



As a family website dedicated to the life and photos of Kid Elberfeld notes (as does the back of the card), this team photo was a part of the Boston Public Library's collection. Oddly enough, the collection it is drawn from is the McGreevey Collection -- a large collection of photos and memorabilia put together by the leader of the Boston "Royal Rooters," Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevey. Perhaps McGreevey added this to his collection to commemorate the year that his Boston Americans won their first World Series in 1903?

In any event, I have no information about how many sets of these were printed, how many were distributed, or how they were distributed. The Standard Catalog notes that the cards are unnumbered and originally sold for "about $2.50."

HALL OF FAMERS

Out of the seventeen cards in the set, four of them represent Hall of Famers: Jack Chesbro, two cards of Clark Griffith (the team manager, which I would assume includes that all-words card above), and Willie Keeler.

ERRORS/VARIATIONS

I'm guessing it is an uncorrected error on Elberfeld's card that the word "tabasco" was misspelled. The Trading Card Database does not have anything listed.

MY TAKE

I know so little about this set that I really can't say too much. So, what do I know? Well, it's not the easiest set to find, for starters. Nothing on eBay as best I can tell, and the only auctions/sales of these cards that I've found are from years ago. A complete set of these sold in November of 2013 on "Kevin Savage Cards" for $10. Another complete set sold as part of a much larger Yankee lot back in 2006.

And somehow, somewhere, the Dimebox champion Nick was able to unearth two of these cards and send them to Zippy Zappy of Cervin' Up Cards/Torren' Up Cards about two-and-a-half years ago.

I have never seen any of these cards myself in the wild. In fact, I never knew this set existed before today.

If you have information on this set, please comment below about it.