One of the more attractive and certainly underrated 19th Century baseball issues is the N135 Duke Sons & Co "Talk of the Diamond" set. Featuring larger cards than typical for the period (4 1/8" x 2 1/2"), each card contains a full-color lithograph of a ballplayer or team with a clever or humorous play on words illustrated on the right. Since the players are not identified on the card itself, the issue has not captured the attention of collectors the way many other sets of the period have. However, the cards are tough to locate, and an interesting card type, so they remain a beautiful example of lithographic baseball art of the period.

This example, titled "A Base Tender," has been graded GOOD 2 by PSA, largely due to corner wear and faint soiling, along with some minor surface wrinkles. Regardless of the card's technical grade, the scarcity of this issue far outweighs any perceived cosmetic flaws on this example.

PSA has only ever graded 15 total examples of this N135, with only ten receiving a higher grade than the Good 2 offered here of "A Base Tender".