Month: April 2018

T206 Piedmont Factory 42: Light Blue v.s. Dark Blue Backs

Charley O’Leary with dark blue Piedmont Factory 42 back

This is an article I’ve had in the works for quite a while.  Almost a year ago, I began writing and researching, but then ran into a bit of a snag.

If you look at enough Piedmont Factory 42 backs, you’ll notice that the blue ink tends to be either very light or very dark.  I’d read a few threads on the subject on net54, but beyond the observation that the ink level varied, I didn’t recall seeing any conclusions drawn.  It’s a minor variation, and maybe not worth spending too much time on.  But then again, at one point Sovereign 350 Green Apple backs were thought to be just a slight color variant of the Forest Green Subset.

So, a few months ago I decided to look into the Piedmont Factory 42 subset to see if I could find any patterns with regard to the dark ink v.s. light ink phenomenon.  I asked a couple friends to help me research.  Adam Goldenberg was nice enough to send me scans of his collection of Piedmont 42s, and Pat Romolo offered to dig through scans on Card Target for me.  Going into the research phase, I was hoping there might be some sort of pattern we’d be able to discern.  Specifically, I was wondering if certain players were printed with only one of the two back types.

The graphic below shows the difference between the light blue and dark blue backs.

The “research phase” was over almost before it started.  I got an email from Pat saying that he had begun to look at scans and he didn’t think there was a pattern.  I meant to take a look for myself, but never got around to it.  Some time passed, and I completely forgot I had started working on this article.  A few weeks back I found it while cleaning up the drafts on my site and decided I should finish it.  After all, even if there is no pattern, that still answers some questions.

So, I delved into the scans that Adam had sent me and past sales on cardtarget.com.  What I was looking for was simple.  I wanted to find one pose that was printed with both a light blue and dark blue back.  I did find that, but I found something else as well.  I went into the project thinking that the backs were almost always either dark blue or light blue.  However, after scrolling through dozens of these backs, I realized that the intensity of the blue actually varies quite a bit.

Below is the “smoking gun” of my research.  One Reulbach with a dark blue back and one with a light blue back (and another that’s somewhere in the middle).  This proves there is no easy pattern where one pose always has either a light blue or a dark blue back.

Reulbach PSA 5 with dark blue Piedmont Factory 42 back

After looking at a bunch of scans, I’m left with a couple thoughts.  First, the darkness v.s. lightness of ink varies quite a bit more than I expected (and more than you’d think from reading the net54 threads).  In my opinion, there are light blue Piedmont Factory 42 backs, dark blue backs, and every shade and variant of blue in between.  Secondly, the fact that I never found any consensus online about the dark blue backs v.s. light blue backs makes a lot of sense.  I’m sure other collectors have looked into this topic in the past, and just never posted anything about it, because they didn’t find any interesting patterns.

Reulbach PSA 5 (mk) with light blue Piedmont Factory 42 back
Ruelbach PSA 5 with a Piedmont Factory 42 back that is neither light blue nor dark blue, but rather somewhere in the middle

Despite the fact that I don’t have any exciting news to report, I figured this topic was still worth posting.  I’m sure I won’t be the last person to notice the differences between the light blue and dark blue backs and wonder if there is a pattern.  Hopefully, I can save some of those people some time.

Sources:
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=137166
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=128227

The Mysterious T206 “Wagner Strip”

I touched on this piece in last week’s article.  It’s the closest thing we have to an uncut T206 sheet.  Clearly it’s significance goes well beyond that fact though.  It’s hard to believe that such an item exists given how rare the T206 Wagner is to begin with.  In my opinion, this “card” is the most desirable T206 (or related item) out there.  Some people might prefer a Wagner or the Collins With Bat Proof, but I’d take this strip every day of the week.

Legend has it that this card was found in the attic of a home that Wagner had once owned.  The attic contained many of Wagner’s personal items including baseball gear and uniforms.  In fact, this card is said to have been found in the back pocket of a pair of uniform pants.  The generally accepted theory is the strip was given to Wagner in an attempt to secure his permission to use his likeness.

As you can see, there are many differences between the way the cards in the strip look and the ultimate finished product.  These differences are not too surprising given that this piece was a “Proof” which was given to Wagner before all of the details were ironed out.  The lines between the cards caused quite a discussion on net54baseball.com back in 2010.  The lines are odd because, as we know, T206 sheets were ultimately not printed with lines between them.  There was a bit of back-and-forth between people who had viewed the card in person and were confident that it was one continuous strip of paper, and a vocal minority who theorized that the strip was made up of 5 individual cards which were carefully pasted together.  In this theory, the lines between the cards was actually a seam.  Ultimately, it seems that the people who held this viewpoint had not viewed the card in person (at least for the most part) and just couldn’t accept that the lines were printed on the cards.  However, there were many differences between the strip and the ultimate finished product, so it doesn’t really make sense to make such a determination based on the printed lines.  Lots of minor details were changed between the time this strip was printed and the time the first T206 cards were released in cigarette packs.  On June 12th 2010, Wayne Varner made this post on net54:

Ted Z and others, I can shed a little light on this proof strip. Back in 1978 Bill Zimpleman, Mike Wheat, Ken Blazek, and myself, Wayne Varner were on a buying trip in the Pittsburgh area and we purchased this strip from a gentleman who had purchased Wagner’s house. We bought a number of items he found in the house. I cannot remember all the details, but after we purchased the strip, we had a drawing, and I won the strip. I sold it in 1980 to Barry Helper, who to my knowledge owned the strip until he passed away*. I can tell you from holding the strip many times, it is not cards pasted together. Could that have been done at the factory and then potographed to send to Wagner, possibly, but not likely. However it was done, it was definitely done at the factory, and has the proof lines like all the proof cards I have ever seen. I have seen the strip on several occasions since Barry passed away and it is in the same orginial condition as when I owned it from 1978 until 1980. There is no question it is orginial and unaltered no matter what anyone says. Hope this helps a little.

Wayne Varner
SHOEBOX CARDS

Mr. Varner was the first collector/dealer to own the card.  He mentions that the thought Halper owned the strip until his death, but actually, Sotheby’s auctioned off the Barry Halper collection in 1999, 6 years before Halper passed away (in 2005).  The next few years after the Sotheby’s auction were quite eventful.

Sotheby’s auctioned off the strip in 1999, as part of the Barry Halper Collection.  It sold for $85,000.

In late 2000, the strip sold for $93,000 in a Steve Verkman Cards and Memorabilia auction.

The winning bid was placed by the “Shop at Home Television Network”.  They bought it with plans to feature it as a prize in an upcoming giveaway they were doing.  It was won by a 15 year-old from California named Jordan Marquez.  Unfortunately, Jordan was hit with a hefty tax bill as a result of winning the strip, and was forced to sell it.  It was consigned with Mastro Net in 2002, where it sold for $78,665.

After that busy three year stretch, the strip stayed out of the spotlight for a while.  However, it wasn’t too long before it surfaced again.  In May of 2010, the Wagner Strip was on display at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia to promote it’s inclusion in the upcoming Hunt Auction, which took place at the All Star Fanfest.   The winning bid of $316,250 (after the juice) was placed by SCP Auctions on behalf of one of their clients.

The Wagner Strip has not sold publicly since 2010.  The T206 market has been quite strong in the intervening eight years.  I imagine the strip would sell for quite a bit more if it were to hit the auction block in the near future.

Sources:
http://www.t206museum.com/page/periodical_32.html
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=123958
https://www.huntauctions.com/live/imageviewer.cfm?auction_num=27&lot_num=242&lot_qual=
http://www.t206museum.com/page/periodical_13.html

e97 Briggs Lozenze Partial Sheet, T206 Lash’s Bitters, and Why Haven’t any Uncut T206 Sheets Survived All These Years?

A few weeks back, I wrote an article about T206 cards from the same sheet.  In it, I talked about a few examples of scrapped sheets, including the amazing Lash’s Bitters Printers Scrap group.  Though I may have danced around the subject, what I neglected to mention is to date, a complete uncut T206 sheet has not been found.

I’d been planning to write an article about the Lash’s Bitters cards for awhile.  As luck would have it, a recent purchase jogged my memory on the subject of uncut sheets.  Last week’s article about the Lash’s Bitters group can be read by clicking the link below.

The Incredible T206 Lash’s Bitters Printer’s Scrap Sheet

This group of 11 hand-cut e97 Briggs Lozenge cards sold a couple years back.  I missed them when they were sold, but a friend got them, so at least I knew where they were.  Ever since I saw them, I’ve hoped to be able to acquire them at some point in the future.  Last week, those hopes finally came to fruition.

If you’ve read all of the articles on this site, you know that I love hand-cut cards.  The bigger the borders, and crazier the cuts, the better.  As you can see from looking at this group, they are some pretty unique looking cards.  When I first saw them, I assumed they all came from the same sheet.  The friend who sold them to me confirmed it by copying the layout of the uncut sheet below.

This is not the first time a group of e97s from the same sheet have surfaced.  Just last Spring, REA auctioned off this group of three panels of an uncut e97 sheet:

This brings me to the central question of the article.  Why aren’t there any uncut T206 sheets out there?  On the surface, it seems very strange.  Here we have this beautiful e97 sheet that has survived all these years (albeit in three pieces), but no such T206 sheet is known to exist.  T206 sheets must have outnumbered e97 sheets by a ratio of 1000:1 (or some similar huge number)*.

On one hand, I do find it surprising that there aren’t any uncut T206 sheets.  On the other hand, it makes some sense that uncut sheets from other sets, such as e97, might make for a more attractive display piece.  The e97 sheet above is undeniably beautiful.  The pastel colors are vivid and striking, and the variety of poses and colors are very pleasing to the eye.  From what we know about T206 sheets, I think it’s fair to say they would not be as attractive a display item.  The Briggs Lozenge sheet above features one of each pose in the 30-card set.  T206 sheets were laid out differently.  A single pose was typically repeated vertically multiple times.  Thanks to the research of Pat Romolo, we know what some of the sheets from the 150-350 series looked like.  The sheet below was recreated by Pat using Plate Scratches found on the backs of Piedmont 150 cards.  As you can see, this sheet looks a lot different than the e97 sheet.  The e97 sheet lends itself to display a lot more than this T206 sheet.

The repetitive nature of the T206 sheet makes for a less attractive presentation, at least in my opinion.  Still, I would expect that there would be a few strips or partial strips of T206s out there somewhere.  This group of cards below is known as the “T206 Test Strip”.  Clearly, these poses were located next to each other on a sheet, but because they were cut into individual cards they don’t qualify as an uncut strip.

The only strip that I know of is the “Wagner Proof” strip.  This incredible item deserves it’s own article, which you can look forward to next Sunday.  Legend has it this strip of cards was given to Honus Wagner by someone associated with either the American Tobacco Company or American Lithographic Company and the strip was found in the back pocket of a pair of Wagner’s Pirates uniform pants.

To date, this is the only uncut T206 strip that I am aware of.  It would not shock me if there is another short strip out there somewhere.  If any of you know of such an item, please let me know via email or the “Contact” button at the top of the page.  Likewise, I wouldn’t be shocked to see a partial strip come to market in the future.  Judging by the Lucky 7 Ty Cobb back find and the Broad Leaf 460 Cobb that recently hit eBay, there are still some amazing T206s out there hidden in attics, desks and old time collections.

The Incredible T206 Lash’s Bitters Printer’s Scrap Sheet

Recently I wrote an article about T206 sheet mates.  This group of cards was the subject of a fun Net54 thread a few years back where members worked together to figure out what was going on the backs of these T206s.  Besides being incredibly cool, they also offer a unique look into other types of jobs the American Lithographic Company was working on at the time.  The backs of these cards were used to test a run of Lash’s Bitters Tonic Laxative trade cards.

If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend checking out the original thread on Net54baseball.com.

First, this Lash’s Bitters trade card was found by Net54 member Jantz:

Then Erick Summers posted this graphic, which lines up some of the cards against a grid of the Lash’s Bitters trade cards:

The graphic overlays below were created by T206 sleuth Chris Browne.  The image below looks like it could have been the front of the Lash’s Bitters trade card from above, but it ended up being the front of a different trade card.  If you take a close look at the image at the top of this article you’ll notice that “LASH’S BITTERS” is printed in red ink with two separate layouts.  One version is printed on just one line, while the other has “LASH’S” printed above “BITTERS”.  Chris’s discovery below shed some light on where the single line of red “LASH’S BITTERS” came from, but the double line version remained a mystery.

Then, Chris found the missing piece to the puzzle:

In my opinion, the T206 Lash’s Bitters are among the coolest cards in the set.  From a purely aesthetic standpoint, they are beautiful cards, and the connection with another commercial product from the same time period only adds to their significance.  The Net54 thread was fun and collaborative and epitomized what can happen when collectors work together on a project they are passionate about.

Doc White: Hidden in Plain Sight

In November 2014, Erick Summers made an amazing discovery.  In a large lot being offered by Heritage Auctions, hiding in plain sight, was a true T206 gem.  Unlike the typical “find” story, luck had nothing to do with this one.  I hadn’t talked to Erick for awhile and I always liked the way he approached collecting T206s.  I wanted to write an article about this find of his, so I decided to reach out to him and see if he wanted to collaborate on it with me.  What follows is Erick’s recollection of the series of events that led to this important T206 discovery:

Written by Erick Summers 

I’ve always been on the hunt for hidden T206 treasures, hence my net 54 moniker of T206Hound.  I thought I had found an “uppy” (as my good friend Johnny calls them) in July 2013 in a Joe’s Vintage Auction:

http://jvscauctions.com/LotDetail.aspx?inventoryid=3868

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=173776

That disappointment didn’t deter me as I continued hunting… trolling the auction sites and eBay daily looking for what others might overlook.  I checked out the November 2014 Heritage auction as soon as it opened.  It had several large T206 lots and as usual I poured over the images of each and every one.  One particular lot immediately grabbed my attention as I could quickly tell that had some graded HOFers, a green Cobb, an over-sized Pattee and two cards with a partial name at top.  Always looking for two namers, I zoomed in but immediately saw that they were double names.

The next scan showed the backs and one of the cards showed a mis-cut back that I knew I had seen before.  While the back of the card was shown right-side-up, I knew that there was a upside down Doc White with an identical “miscut.”  Was this really what I thought it was?  For it to be an upside-down back, that means that the photographer would have had to place the cards face up, take the photo and then turn them all over.  Then the card wouldn’t be aligned and the photographer would have to rotate it 180 degrees to match the others.  Did this person not realize that the card was unique, or was my hypothesis incorrect?

It didn’t take me long to find an image of the card I remembered seeing on Net54:

Having to keep this discovery to myself for three weeks was going to be tough.  I also knew that a lot of this size with a Cobb and several HOF was going to bring in a pretty hefty price even with the prospect of this hidden gem being included.  I really don’t recall the bidding process on this, but I was ecstatic when I won.  But then I started to question whether the card was what I thought it was.  If I was wrong, I likely overpaid for the lot.

The next few days were nerve-racking.  I wired money to Heritage and waited for the package to ship.  When it finally arrived I called Johnny as I opened the box.  The top card in the package was the White.  I turned the card over and hunch had paid off.  I was holding an “uppy!”

As with most of my discoveries, the hunt was the exciting part.  I needed to sell this unique card to pay for the lot.  The Philly Show was soon after and I consigned it to Al Crisafulli who had it graded by SGC at the show.  I had nearly as much fun watching the bidding on my consignment.  While it didn’t reach the price I was hoping, I can still recall the joy I had in the discovery.

Written by Erick Summers 
Links:

https://loveofthegameauctions.com/LotDetail.aspx?inventoryid=4565

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-cards/lots/1909-11-t206-white-borders-partial-set-97-with-hofers-and-print-errors/a/7120-

80264.shttp://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?