Incredibly rare studio cabinet photo originating from the studio of Joseph Wood, one of New York's premier studio photographers, well-known for both his baseball photography and his connection to various 19th Century baseball card issues. Each of the photos originating from this series picture a vignette portrait of a member of the New York Metropolitans of the American Association. Each player is handsomely dressed, wearing a polka-dot necktie. These images (without vignettes) would be used on N172 Old Judge portrait cards; these "Spotted Tie" portraits are among the most desirable of all the subsets in the series. The Old Judge "Spotted Tie" subset is extremely difficult to complete; these Jos. Wood cabinets are more rare by orders of magnitude. In fact, of the five examples featured in this auction, only one appears in the most recent (2017) edition of the Standard Catalog, with just three appearing in the online checklist at TCDB.com. 

Each of the cards in the grouping we are offering shares a common characteristic: the subject's name has been written in the bottom border, in pencil. Though no advanced collector of this type of material would presume this writing to be an autograph, the writing gave both grading companies pause. Neither SGC nor PSA would holder the cards for fear that the writing would somehow be mistaken for an Candy Nelson autograph, so each company (including SGC, which doesn't even authenticate autographs, and who have authenticated cabinets with similar writing in the past) returned the cards to us without authenticating. We assure you, this cabinet is genuine!

By 1886, John "Candy" Nelson was a grizzled veteran, at 37 years old nearing the end of a 13-year career that saw him play in the first World Series in 1884, leading the league in bases on balls in both 1884 and 1885, despite being one of the oldest players in the league.  He continued to play in New York for various teams until he was 41 years old. Despite the lengthy career, he was granted just one card in the N172 Old Judge issue, a "Spotted Tie" portrait catalogued as card #341-1. Of the group of Jos. Wood Metropolitans cabinets featured in this auction, this is the cleanest, with some visible soiling around the edges of the photo and some light corner and edge wear. A tiny tear is visible at the top right edge, more noticeable on the reverse, affecting only the cardboard mount and not the photograph itself. An extraordinary piece, impossibly rare, discovered recently enough that it does not appear in the 2017 issue of the Standard Catalog, though this very example has been subsequently catalogued at TCDB.com.