I am thrilled to present a new guest-article, written by Ed McCollum. I have been wanting to tell this story since back before I started this website. I brainstormed a list of 50 or so ideas for articles and this was right at the top of the list. Ed’s rebuilt Howe McCormick Collection is my favorite T206 project. It’s an incredibly unique labor of love. Initially, I figured I would write the story, but after chatting with Ed about the project, I thought it would be really cool if Ed wrote the story himself, assuming he was willing. Luckily for us, he was. Enjoy! – Luke
My first card with a Howe McCormick stamp on it came as quite a disappointment.
It was 1991, and I was in the process of building a complete set of T206s, while along the way trying to find as many of the different tobacco brand backs as I could afford. When a Hindu-backed George Davis, listed in VG-EX condition showed up in the classifieds of Sports Collectors Digest, and at a very reasonable price, I jumped on it. Three weeks later, when the card finally arrived, it had this huge, ugly stamp across the back with someone’s name and address. A call to the dealer convinced me that you couldn’t get an otherwise VG-E condition rare-backed card at that price, unless it had some flaw. So in the binder it went with all the others.
Jump to 2007. I was still working on that complete set, but the realization that I would never finish it had set in. Still, every night I’d look online for cards I didn’t have that might fit my budget. A George Hunter card with a Piedmont back and what looked like the same stamp caught my attention. I hadn’t thought about that stamped card in years, but pulled out the binder, and yes, it was the same. So why not bid on this one, and have two cards with the same stamp? I bid and won.
Within a matter of days, a post appeared on the net54baseball.com website asking people to show their cards that had either unusual marks or stamps on them. I posted my two, telling of the gap in years between finding them, and soon had several emails from other members, stating they had one too, and would I want to trade or purchase from them? After all, why not find out how many we could find? And that started my project in earnest.
By the 100-year anniversary of the issue of the T206 set in 2009, I had 132 cards with Howe’s stamp on the back. I’d sold my original set of almost 200 cards and used the funds from their sale to fund my new set. And since the mark on the back was a qualifier for a lower grade from any grading company, the new cards I was acquiring came at a lower cost than many I would have needed to complete a real set of T206s.
Curiosity had also gotten the better of me, as I tried to figure out exactly who was Howe McCormick? Through the years, and with the help of other collectors, I’ve been able to piece together that Howe was born on July 31, 1895 in Gainesville, Florida to parents who owned a market. The market, which was both the family business and home, did a booming business in tobacco. Hopefully that explains how a 14-year old would have so many cards. Draft records show he enlisted in the Army in 1919, was discharged two years later to the same address, but by the 1930 census, he was a married father of one, and he had a different home address.
It wasn’t until 2013 that I finally found a photo of Howe online. Listed as a sophomore, he was shown in the Alachuan year book for 1913 (Gainesville High School), both in the class photo and as part of the school band. Finally, photographic proof of the man whose cards I was still continuing to find with great regularity.
In 2015, I was finally able to make contact with a second cousin of Howe’s who still lives in Florida. Howe’s grandfather was a rather important minister in the early days of Gainesville, and the family and the church he founded have stayed in close contact. With the help of a net54baseball.com board member, I was able to contact the church, who connected me with the cousin. He was able to verify some of my information, such as Howe’s death in 1976, his wife’s death four years later and the identity of their child, who had changed the spelling of her name during a show business career. I later found that she died just two years before I started to collect nothing but her father’s cards.
The cousin was also kind enough to share the only three photos his family had of Howe, including a photo of the store interior, showing the uncle that Howe was named after, and lots of tobacco products seen sitting on the shelves.
Through the years, I’ve also discovered Howe had two different stamps he used to mark his cards. Found on almost all the cards is a two-line stamp, with his name in all capital letters, followed by the address of the store/home. But on three of the cards, a stamp appears using his first name (Ulrich), H as his middle initial, his last name, followed by the word Agent. The second line reads Saturday Evening Post, and the third line gives the home address. Apparently, Howe was an entrepreneur, selling magazines while a youth. Perhaps one evening he used the rubber stamp from his business on the back of the cards, instead of his personal stamp. Interestingly enough, those three are all in green, while all the others are in some shade of faded black.
As of now, early March 2017, I have 311 cards in my rebuilt collect collection of Howe’s cards. 273 are Piedmont, 16 are Hindu, and 22 are Old Mill. There are another 30 that I know exist, either in the collections of others the cards have significant meaning to, or that have been lost in auctions where I couldn’t manage the high bid. And about once a month, a new one surfaces, meaning I still need to check the Internet and auction sites daily.
If you happen to have any cards with Howe’s stamp on the back, I’d really like to hear from you, whether you are interested in selling or just letting me know so I can add your card to my data. Please contact Luke on this site.
Written by Ed McCollum