Few prewar card issues epitomize the term "scarce and desirable" the way the 1887 N690 Kalamazoo Bat cards do. Issued between 1886 and 1887 the "K-Bats" are CDV-sized photographic cards mounted on heavy cardboard. While some have advertising printed on the back this particular card is of the blank-backed variety.Tough 19th Century cards are often the passion of advanced long-time collectors that prefer their cards ungraded in their collection. However we acknowledge that grading company population reports while never accurate enough with issues like this to be the "bible " are an excellent barometer of relative scarcity. As such we"ll report that between PSA and SGC only 201 K-Bats have been graded in total with Mulvey represented by a total of 10 different graded examples.Of the graded examples of the Mulvey only two of the 10 cards has graded higher - an SGC 5 and a PSA 5 (the only Mulvey graded by PSA). This particular Mulvey is the second highest-graded example encapsulated by SGC although there are two others at this level as well.The scarcity of Kalamazoo Bats cards coupled with their desirability among advanced collectors means that they don"t trade hands very often. Assembling a complete set is merely impossible with just one registered set between the PSA and SGC registries combined (an SGC-registered set that is just 51% complete). As such even lower grade examples routinely sell for several thousand dollars.Beyond all those stats though this is just a beautiful beautiful card. The image as you can see is a crisp clean photograph of the Philadelphia third baseman posed in his defensive position glove on hand as if awaiting a ground ball. The photograph itself is in fantastic shape with a hint of staining on the image adjacent to Mulvey"s right shoulder. The cardboard mount is clean and the blank back is undamaged.We