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.