APBA 101: How to determine what year cards are based on

This is a question I get frequently… I have a baseball card but I can’t tell what year it represents. Can you help me?

It’s a good question. Sometimes we buy card sets and then set them aside and rediscover them. Of course, we want to know what season it is for. Maybe we’ll find a loose card somewhere and will want identify it. Is there a way to identify the year? Yes… mostly.

Now, APBA makes it easy

If you’re buying the current set and any from the past couple of decades, APBA puts the year on the players card along with the stats. Starting in 2000, the APBA Company started this practice of putting the stats.

But what about older season sets?

Like me, you may have a lot of APBA Baseball sets printed before 2000 and do not have the year printed on the card. What then?

Since 2012, APBA has always placed the 12 at 23. It wasn’t always that way. Before 2012, APBA had a tradition of moving the result number 12 on the card. It would be located on different dice roll each year. Aside from being an interesting tradition by the Company it became a helpful way to determine the year of the season set.

You can see a full list of APBA Baseball season set up until 2011 with a host of information including the location of the 12. With a little detective work and just a little baseball knowledge, you should be able to figure out what season it is. Many thanks to Doug Burg for compiling the original list!

So with this example of this Jim Rice card here, I see that his 12 is at the 26. Looking at the APBA 12 List, I see that the APBA cardmakers put the 12 on the 26 for these years:

• 1951 (the original, very first one!)
• 1945
• 1954 (2nd reprint)
• 1957 (reprint)
• 1964 (2nd reprint)
• 1968
• 1970 (2nd reprint)
• 1976 (reprint)
• 1980 (reprint)
• 2011
• The OFAS set
• The BATS set

With a look at stats for Rice (who played from 1974-1989), I can tell his 1976 stats look more appropriate for this card. However, after consulting with Rich Zawadzki and Lance Freezeland, it turns out this card is from the OFAS (Original Franchise All-Stars) and is based on Rice’s 1978 season. At the very least I have narrowed it down to a couple years.

You can view the APBA 12 List here!

There is also some very interesting info including set size and year it was published. I frequently refer to this list especially when confirming the years of Monster Cards.

What if I’m still stuck?

Here are a couple more ideas to try finding the elusive year of the APBA card:

• Post it to the APBA Baseball group on Facebook. If the folks there don’t know, no one does!
• Try narrowing down the year by using roster lists on Baseball Reference. For example, if the Dodgers team you have has Don Sutton and Don Drysdale but not Sandy Koufax, most likely it is a year after 1966. Looking at the real life stats and comparing the card numbers (and J numbers, if they exist) will help.

A note about APBA copyright dates

The APBA Company at one time published the baseball season card sets in the following spring. At some point, began stamping the copyright year on the cards. They considered the “Copyright” year the year the set was published not the year the stats it was based on.

For example, in the photo of the XB roster list displayed, the “1975 edition” was based on the stats of the 1974 MLB season.

Also see Don Ferrarese’s interesting card. His copyright year is printed on the lower right as 1989 but this is indeed his 1988 card.

Of course, teams of the past (such as 1922) and reprints will of course have copyright dates that don’t correspond with the year the cards are based.

I hope this was helpful!