An extremely rare 19th Century issue, the N690 Kalamazoo Bats cards were manufactured by Chas. Gross & Co. of Philadelphia to advertise Kalamazoo Bats cigarettes.  Each card featured a photograph attached to a cardboard back that was either blank or featured a redemption ad, by which smokers could obtain various prizes in exchange for cards.  One of few multi-subject cards in the set, this examples been the subject of a great deal of confusion for quite some time - even erroneously identified in the printed catalog for this very auction.

The subjects identified on the card are outfielder Harry Lyons, who played one game with the 1887 Philadelphia Quakers, being attended to by team trainer Tom Taylor.  It has been determined, however, that Lyons is misidentified on the card, and the subject is actually pitcher Jim Devlin.  Of course we misidentified BOTH subjects in our printed catalog, rectified here.  

The card is quite a specimen, graded VG/EX 4 by SGC with light wear at the edges and very slight fading to the image.  The back is blank, with a light wrinkle across the surface.  Some additional soiling is largely responsible for the numerical grade.  An especially attractive card, the highest-graded example assessed by SGC.