May 07, 2020 - Sale 2534

Sale 2534 - Lot 397

Price Realized: $ 812
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(SPORTS--TRACK.) Heppenheimer & Maurer; lithographers. Cigarette card of star pedestrian Frank Hart. Lithographed tinted card, 3 x 1 1/2 inches; minor wear, faint mount remnants on verso. Encapsulated in transparent mount by the grading company SGC with a grade of "A." New York: Between the Acts & Bravo Cigarettes, circa early 1880s?
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Additional Details

Fred Hichborn (1858-1908), a Haitian immigrant to Boston, gained fame as a pedestrian, competing in the long-distance walking races which were popular on tracks across the country in the early 1880s. He used the name Frank Hart, and often went by the nickname "Black Dan." In 1880, he set a record by walking 565 miles in 6 days. This card was one of twelve athletes issued in a set by Thomas H. Hall, known as N344 in the tobacco card world. Hart and the other pedestrians in the set were all active from about 1879 to 1882.
After the race-walking fad gradually faded out, Hart played a bit of semi-professional baseball with independent teams in Chicago and St. Louis, which (depending on your patience for semantics) might make this card the first to depict a (future) African-American baseball player.