A cricketer, baseball player, and league executive, Maxson Mortimer Rogers was also a professional printer who self-published a weekly sports publication called the New England Chronicle in 1869-70.  In 1871, Rogers began printing "Base Ball Photographic Cards" and selling them at games, with a goal of producing cards of every prominent player in the country.  These Mort Rogers Scorecards were four-panel folded scorecards, each of which included a photograph glued into an ornately-framed border, with the player's name, position and team typeset underneath. Advertisements on the reverse panel, with the interior pages including a blank scorecard.  The scorecards are the product of expert craftsmanship, each card carefully assembled by hand, each photo individually glued in place. Despite his goal of producing cards of every player, only a few dozen were likely produced, with somewhere between 12 and two dozen surviving subjects known today.  The scorecards are extremely rare today, with somewhere between 50 and 100 examples known, with fewer complete scorecards known, as most examples feature only the front cover.

Mort Rogers scorecards are among the most desirable of all the baseball collectibles of the era, and although they are clearly designed as scorecards, a case can be made that they are actually among the earliest baseball cards.  Each features a player who is clearly identified, their numbering implies that they were issued as a series and intended to be collected, and they serve the dual purposes of advertising a product. Rogers even calls them "cards." Regardless of definition, Rogers' innovations were far ahead of their time.

This example features Douglas Allison, catcher for the Olympic Club of Washington, DC. Allison was responsible for the innovation of catching wearing a pair of buckskin mittens, a precursor to the catcher's mitt. He was also known as the first catcher to set up close behind the batter, in an effort to reduce stolen bases. A member of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, Allison is featured on the 1869 Peck & Snyder trade card, considered by many to be the first baseball card.  

Though the scorecard does exhibit some wear, including pencil notations on the reverse, the scorecard itself is unused and the image of Allison is clear and strong. Some areas of mild soiling are apparent, particularly at the spine. As Allison's pro career was largely over by the early 1880s, he is not featured on any baseball cards. An extremely important and rare piece of memorabilia, one of the earliest collectible items to feature an individual image of a baseball player.