1904 Allegheny Card Co. Christy Mathewson PSA EX 5

Graded EX 5 by PSA. This is an extraordinary rarity! Extremely rare sample card from the legendary Allegheny Card Company set of 1904, featuring New York Giants young star pitcher, Christy Mathewson. This is one of the key cards in the set and is one of Mathewson's earliest cards. It is also his rarest. To date, the only known Allegheny Card Co. set is the one sold in the auction of the famous Copeland Collection. (Copeland purchased that set, then housed in its original box, from REA in 1990.) The set was eventually broken up and dispersed to the four corners of the collecting world. There has yet to be a single additional card from this series to ever surface. This extraordinary example of Christy Mathewson, of course, originates from the Copeland set, and as is the case with all Allegheny cards, may very well be unique. (It is important to note that the PSA Population Report lists a PSA 6, which REA sold in 2008, but the offered card is one in the same with the PSA 6 as it was obviously regraded sometime in the last 18 years.) The set is of special interest to collectors, not just because of its extreme rarity, but also because it is one of the very few sets of baseball cards produced during the first few years of the century. The Allegheny card set offers a unique blend of players from the pre-1900 and post-1900 eras, including many players who appear in few (if any) other sets. This is an exceptional example of future Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson from one of prewar card collecting's rarest sets!