N125 Puzzle Set

If you are familiar with baseball cards, then you've probably heard of the T206 Honus Wagner, which is one of the most expensive baseball cards out there, fetching into the millions of dollars. T206 signifies the set that it is part of. Until recently, I didn't realize the T206 name originates from "The American Card Catalog: The Standard Guide on All Collected Cards and Their Values" by Jefferson Burdick, first published in 1939. The T stands for Tobacco, since these cards were inserted into tobacco products and have tobacco advertisements on their backs. The catalog lists many types of trade cards, not just sports and not just tobacco.

There are a few puzzle sets mentioned. One of the more interesting puzzle sets is the W. Duke, Sons & Co. #125 (later known as N125). It includes 15 cards and was made around 1889. I haven't been able to find a complete catalog of these cards in one place, so here is my attempt to do so, but it is still missing some. I don't own any of these cards but found examples across the web. While most of these aren't mechanical puzzles, they are still interesting and nicely illustrated. These cards are hard to find and command a high price (not as high as the Wagner though!). The most popular card is probably the baseball one (No. 15), since it also appeals to baseball card collectors.

Each card contains the solution for another card, which presumably encourages people to collect them all. I find the instructions on many of these confusing. Half the puzzle is figuring out exactly what the rules are suppose to be.

Obverse	Reverse
No. 3 Button - Have not been able to find a picture of this one, but from solution on another card, it appears to be an Eulerian path problem, where the goal is to visit every edge exactly once, allowing for vertices to be visited more than once.